Piezospectroscopic measurement of high-frequency vibrations in a pulse-tube cryostat

Abstract

Vibrations in cryocoolers are a recurrent concern to the end user. They appear in different parts of the acoustic spectrum depending on the refrigerator type, Gifford McMahon or pulse-tube, and with a variable coupling strength to the physical system under interest. Here, we use the piezospectroscopic effect in rare-earth doped crystals at low temperature as a high resolution, contact-less probe for the vibrations. With this optical spectroscopic technique, we obtain and analyze the vibration spectrum up to 700kHz of a 2kW pulse-tube cooler. We attempt an absolute calibration based on known experimental parameters to make our method partially quantitative and to provide a possible comparison with other well-established techniques.