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Systems with Small Dissipation

Translated by Erast Gliner
Electromagnetic and mechanical oscillators are crucial in such diverse fields as electrical engineering, microwave technology, optical technology, and experimental physics. For example, such oscillators are the key elements in instruments for detecting extremely weak mechanical forces and electromagnetic signals are essential to highly stable standards of time and frequency. The central problem in developing such instruments is to construct oscillators that are as perfectly simple harmonic as possible; the largest obstacle is the oscillator’s dissipation and the fluctuating forces associated with it.

This book, first published in Russian in 1981 and updated with new data for this English edition, is a treatise on the sources of dissipation and other defects in mechanical and electromagnetic oscillators and on practical techniques for minimizing such defects. Written by a team of researchers from Moscow State University who are leading experts in the field, the book is a virtual encyclopedia of theoretical formulas, experimental techniques, and practical lore derived from twenty-five years of experience. Intended for the experimenter who wishes to construct near-perfect instrumentation, the book provides information on everything from the role of phonon-phonon scattering as a fundamental source of dissipation to the effectiveness of a thin film of pork fat in reducing the friction between a support wire and a mechanically oscillating sapphire crystal.

The researchers that V. B. Braginsky has led since the mid-1960s are best known in the West for their contributions to the technology of gravitational-wave detection, their experimental search for quarks, their test of the equivalency principle, and their invention of new experimental techniques for high-precision measurement, including "quantum nondemolition movements." Here, for the first time, they provide a thorough overview of the practical knowledge and experimental methods that have earned them a worldwide reputation for ingenuity, talent, and successful technique.

155 pages | 5.80 x 9.00 | © 1985

Physical Sciences: Experimental and Applied Physics, Physics and Astronomy

Table of Contents

Foreword
Preface to the English Edition
Preface to the Russian Edition
I. Introduction
1. Classical oscillators with small dissipation
2. Quantum mechanical features of macroscopic oscillators
II. Mechanical Oscillators with Small Dissipation
3. Fundamental dissipative processes in solids
Thermoelastic dissipation
Dissipation due to phonon-phonon interactions
Dissipation due to phonon-electron interactions in metals
Dissipation due to lattice defects and the internal structures of solid bodies
4. Energy losses arising from the design of a mechanical resonator
Losses due to gas friction
Surface losses
Losses due to coupling of different kinds of vibrations
Losses in a resonator’s suspension
5. High-Q resonators made from sapphire monocrystals
III. Electromagnetic Resonators with Small Dissipation
6. Superconducting cavity electromagnetic resonators
Surface resistance and residual resistance of superconductors
Quality factors of superconducting resonators
Frequency stability of superconducting resonators
Methods of constructing superconducting resonators
7. Properties of superconducting resonators with dielectric interiors
8. High-quality dielectric ring resonators
Radiative losses due to curvature of the waveguide
Radiative losses due to spatial variations of the dielectric constant inside the resonator
Radiative losses due to roughness or to smooth inhomogeneities of the resonator’s geometry
IV. High-quality Electromagnetic Resonators in Physical Experiments
9. Electromagnetic self-excited oscillators stabilized by high-quality superconducting resonators
10. Applications of superconducting resonators in radiophysical measurements
Measurements of very small mechanical vibrations
Measurements of small electromagnetic losses in solids
Measurements of the surface impedances of superconductors
Other applications of superconducting resonators
V. Mechanical Oscillators in Physical Experiments
11. Mechanical gravitational antennae
12. Applications of high-quality mechanical resonators to frequency stabilization
Epilogue to the English Edition
Bibliography
Index

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