The 2 Degrees of Freedom Facility in Firenze for the study of Weak Forces

The LISA test-mass (TM) is sensitive to weak forces along all 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs). Extensive ground testing is required in order to evaluate the influence of cross-talks of read-outs and actuators operating on different DoFs. To best represent the flight conditions, we developed in Firenze a facility with 2 soft DoFs. Using this facility we measure the forces and stiffnesses acting simultaneously along the 2 soft DoFs, and, more specifically, we will be able to debug residual couplings between the TM and the capacitive position sensor that reads the TM position, and to measure actuation cross talks with closed feedback loop. The facility is now ready, and here we report on the commissioning tests, and on the first measurements.