INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Gravitational waves, tiny ripples in spacetime caused by cosmic collisions like merging black holes, are almost impossibly faint. Detecting them requires LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), one of the most sensitive instruments ever built.
However, there’s a catch. To see farther and catch weaker signals, LIGO needs more powerful lasers, but stronger lasers slightly bend the mirrors, and even tiny bends smaller than a proton can block the signals.
A team of researchers has developed a new system called FROSTI to fix this problem, enabling LIGO and future observatories to explore the cosmos more deeply than ever before.
“The problem is, increasing laser power tends to destroy the delicate quantum states we rely on to improve signal clarity. Our new technology solves this tension by making sure the optics remain undistorted, even at megawatt power levels,” Jonathan Richardson, one of the researchers and a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, said.