Comparison of parametric instabilities for different test mass materials in advanced gravitational wave interferometers

Following the recognition that parametric instabilities can significantly compromise the performance of advanced laser interferometer gravitational wave detectors, we compare the performance of three different test mass configurations: all fused silica test masses, all sapphire test masses and fused silica inboard test masses with sapphire end test masses. We show that the configuration with sapphire end test masses offers the opportunity for thermal tuning on a time scale comparable to the ring up time of oscillatory instabilities. This approach may enable significant reduction of parametric gain.