Strings that can vibrate forever (almost)

Interesting, indeed, but this looks *very* fragile!

Jeroen Belleman

It might not have the stability or tempco of a quartz crystal. The SiN string will surely have a different thermal expansion factor than the silicon substrate.

It would be cool to have a worldwide (or even in space) array of thousands of 3-axis gravitational wave detectors, instead of just three single-axis sites. We could image g-waves at high resolution.

It's a project in progress, but the projected launch date is currently

On a sunny day (Thu, 23 May 2024 11:04:02 +0200) it happened Jeroen Belleman snipped-for-privacy@nospam.please wrote in <v2n0m9$1m371$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Yes, but maybe not enough free space to move so much it breaks?

I just hope they used a Faraday cage and kept it away from other sources and their harmonics in the 214 kHz range. Wallwarts! bats? some other piezo stuff.

As I understand it, if a string touches something, it tends to stick. That was one of the problems that caused low yields in early devices.

With a Q > 1e9, coupling to outside influences is by definition very weak. I don't see this thing becoming important as a low noise oscillator element though. Pity. Maybe it's useful as a precision thermometer.

Jeroen Belleman

Possibly some sort of sensor.

Because the oscillation obeys a differential equation, while it takes Q cycles to respond to external forcing,it responds instantly to any effect that changes the mass or spring constant.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs