The Glasgow Speed Meter proof-of-principle experiment

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• Christian Graef (Glasgow)
• Wednesday 18 June 2014, 14:30-15:30
• Physics West 106.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ilya Mandel.

First and second generation earth based laser interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors are variants of the well-known Michelson interferometer configuration. Second generation detectors, such as the Advanced LIGO detectors, will, for the first time, be limited in their sensitivities by quantum mechanical fluctuations over a large frequency range in their detection bands. Successive measurements of the position of the test mass mirrors in a Michelson interferometer do not commute and are thus limited in their accuracy by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP). A prospective option to overcome this limitation are “speed meter” interferometer configurations in which the velocity of the test mass mirrors, caused by a passing gravitational wave, is measured rather than their relative displacement. At Glasgow we are working on the realisation of the world’s first Sagnac speed meter interferometer proof-of-principle experiment. With this experiment we are aiming to demonstrate the predicted lower quantum noise in a Sagnac speed meter compared to a Michelson interferometer which equivalent parameters. In this seminar I will give an overview of the Glasgow Sagnac Speed Meter experiment.

This talk is part of the Astrophysics Talks Series series.

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• Astrophysics Talks Series
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