I have started measuring the low frequency noise of the FET front end + LT1128 low noise preamp from Rai Weiss. It has a very low input current noise because its FET based, which is not surprising. It is also a fairly low voltage noise box - the best measured ones have an input referred noise of ~0.35 nV/rHz.

Today I measured the noise of the one we have down to 0.1 Hz. It looks like a good candidate for a Geophone readout (e.g. Ranger or GS-13 or perhaps the L-4C). Because I didn't thermally shield any of this stuff, the broadband noise is ~0.8 nV/rHz. The low frequency corner is ~15 Hz.

I attach the LISO simulation of the voltage noise referred to the input. The circuit is described in this entry.

We can probably do better than this if we package it a little better or give it time to warm up or use metal film resistors inside. Even as it is, however, it would allow us to reach the thermal noise of the Ranger (or GS-13) down to 0.1 Hz.

This should be ~1.5 or 2x better than the LT1012 based readout at 1 Hz and 10x better down at 0.1 Hz (c.f. T0900457).