A gravitational wave observatory operating beyond the quantum shot-noise limit: Squeezed light in application

By J. Abadie, B. Abbott, R. Abbott, T. Abbott, M. Abernathy, C. Adams, Rana X. Adhikari, C. Affeldt, B. Allen, G. Allen and 604 more. 2011

874 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Around the globe several observatories are seeking the first direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). These waves are predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity [Einstein, A., Annalen der Physik 49, 769-822 (1916)] and are generated e.g. by black-hole binary systems [Sathyaprakash, B. S. and Schutz, B. F., Living Rev. Relativity 12, 2 (2009)]. Current GW detectors are Michelson-type kilometer-scale laser interferometers measuring the distance changes between in vacuum suspended mirrors. The sensitivity of these detectors at frequencies above several hundred hertz is limited by the vacuum (zero-point) fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. A quantum technology - the injection of squeezed light [Caves, C. M., Phys. Rev. D 23, 1693-1708 (1981)] - offers a solution to this problem. Here we demonstrate the squeezed-light enhancement of GEO600, which will be the GW observatory operated by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in its search for GWs for the next 3-4 years. GEO600 now operates with its best ever sensitivity, which proves the usefulness of quantum entanglement and the qualification of squeezed light as a key technology for future GW astronomy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc3e151b37a004db3bfe7d69b1b40cf11b032952

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run (2020, methodology): “GEO600 has been using the same approach since 2011 [50,51] but has not detected gravitational waves so far due to an overall too-low sensitivity.”
Imaging with quantum states of light (2019, background): “The domain was largely initiated by the desire to improve the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors, which led to the early theoretical developments of quantum non-demolition measurement [97], and the use of squeezed light in interferometric gravitational wave detectors [98, 99].”
Enhanced sensitivity of the LIGO gravitational wave detector by using squeezed states of light (2013, background): “[14] Abadie, J.”
The elusive Heisenberg limit in quantum-enhanced metrology (2012, background): “(17) As the SS of precision holds when FN scales linearly with N, the bound equation (16) implies that a sufficient condition for SS is to find h for which b  K = 0, or equivalently 42:”