Losses in pendular suspensions due to centrifugal coupling

Abstract

We present an analysis of the centrifugal coupling of a simple pendulum to a dissipative support. We show that such a coupling leads to an amplitude dependent quality factor. For amplitudes which could be present in laser interferometer gravitational wave detector suspensions, this mechanism could limit the quality factor of the test mass suspension significantly to 10¹⁰ and should be considered in the design of advanced LIGO type detectors.