Improvement of the seismic noise attenuation performance of the Monolithic Geometric Anti-Spring filters for gravitational wave interferometric detectors

The Monolithic Geometric Anti-Spring (GAS) filter is one of the most efficient vertical seismic isolation devices for Gravitational Wave (GW) interferometers. However, the attenuation of this filter was previously limited to around 60 dB due to the high frequency saturation associated with the filter's distributed mass—a problem typical of passive mechanical filters. We show that it is possible to circumvent this limit using a compensation wand based on the Center Of Percussion (COP) effect. When this device is mounted in parallel with the blade springs of a GAS filter, attenuation improves to 80 dB in the region above 10 Hz. Using this device it is therefore possible to design simpler attenuation chains consisting of fewer stages.