Mötesplats Rydberg: Jan Harms - The technology that opened a new window to the Universe

Tuesday 13 Feb 2018, 15:15 → 16:15 Europe/Stockholm

Fysiska institutionen-Physics Department

The gravitational-wave signal from the merger of two neutron stars seen on August 17, 2017, created a differential displacement of test masses of less than one attometer, which is a small fraction of the diameter of atomic nuclei. Displacement of the surface of the ground is of order nanometer when integrated over frequencies above 10Hz, and individual atoms of test masses have vibration amplitudes of order tens of picometers due to thermal excitation at room temperature. Therefore, technologies needed to be developed to suppress the impact of these disturbances by many orders of magnitude. In addition, a septillion of photons from a laser source needs to stream through parts of the detectors each second to generate a sufficiently strong signal response so that noise from quantum vacuum fluctuations does not dominate. In this talk, I will present the key technologies that made these achievements possible, and I will give some examples how the gravitational-wave community revolutionized parts of physics just by understanding the instruments they wanted to build."