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Research In Optics For Gravitational Wave Detection, Britney Biltz, Noura Ibrahim, Brennan Moore
Research In Optics For Gravitational Wave Detection, Britney Biltz, Noura Ibrahim, Brennan Moore
Undergraduate Research Symposium - Prescott
B.Biltz uses a horizontal “Zollner style” pendulum to monitor changes in the local gravitational field. The pendulum is attracted to the moon and the Sun and so, as the Earth turns, the pendulum’s equilibrium point shifts within a 24-hour period. This is an experiment designed to test the limits of such a pendulum. This sort of system may be useful as a method of monitoring and correcting for gravity gradient noise in future gravitational wave detectors.
N.Ibrahim characterizes thermo-optic noise in high-performance mirror coatings of the type used in Advanced LIGO. To characterize thermo-optic noise, she measures the change in …