Related papers: Advanced LIGO
The Advanced LIGO detectors have recently completed their second observation run successfully. The run lasted for approximately 10 months and lead to multiple new discoveries. The sensitivity to gravitational waves was partially limited by…
The effect of gravitational waves (GWs) has been observed indirectly, by monitoring the change in the orbital frequency of neutron stars in a binary system as they lose energy via gravitational radiation. However, GWs have not yet been…
Ground-based laser interferometers for gravitational-wave (GW) detection were first constructed starting 20 years ago and as of 2010 collection of several years' worth of science data at initial design sensitivities was completed. Upgrades…
Gravitational waves from binary black hole and neutron star mergers are being regularly detected. As of 2021, ninety confident gravitational wave detections have been made by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. Work is ongoing to further increase…
Accurate and reliable calibration of the Advanced LIGO detectors has enabled a plethora of gravitational-wave discoveries in the detectors' first decade of operation, starting with the ground-breaking discovery, GW150914. In the first…
Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of earth-based gravitational wave observatories is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry.…
In the coming years, the gravitational wave community will be optimizing detector performance for a variety of astrophysical sources that make competing demands on the detector sensitivity in different frequency bands. In this paper we…
Achieving the quantum noise targets of third-generation detectors will require 10 dB of squeezed-light enhancement as well as megawatt laser power in the interferometer arms - both of which require unprecedented control of the internal…
Currently planned second-generation gravitational-wave laser interferometers such as Advanced LIGO exploit the extensively investigated signal-recycling (SR) technique. Candidate Advanced LIGO configurations are usually designed to have two…
In the last decade, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the European Virgo observatory have opened a new observational window on the universe. These cavity-enhanced laser interferometers sense spacetime…
We describe the angular sensing and control of the 4 km detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The culmination of first generation LIGO detectors, Enhanced LIGO operated between 2009 and 2010 with about…
The ``optical springs'' regime of the signal-recycled configuration of laser interferometric gravitational-wave detectors is analyzed taking in account optical losses in the interferometer arm cavities. This regime allows to obtain…
The sensitivity of ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors will be improved in the future via the injection of frequency-dependent squeezed vacuum. The achievable improvement is ultimately limited by losses of the interferometer…
Isolating ground-based interferometric gravitational wave observatories from environmental disturbances is one of the great challenges of the advanced detector era. In order to directly observe gravitational waves, the detector components…
Small, highly absorbing points are randomly present on the surfaces of the main interferometer optics in Advanced LIGO. The resulting nano-meter scale thermo-elastic deformations and substrate lenses from these micron-scale absorbers…
Laser interferometers with high circulating power and suspended optics, such as the LIGO gravitational wave detectors, experience an optomechanical coupling effect known as a parametric instability: the runaway excitation of a mechanical…
In 2009-2010, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observa- tory (LIGO) operated together with international partners Virgo and GEO600 as a network to search for gravitational waves of astrophysical origin. The sensitiv- ity of these…
We propose an upgrade to Advanced LIGO (aLIGO), named LIGO-LF, that focuses on improving the sensitivity in the 5-30 Hz low-frequency band, and we explore the upgrade's astrophysical applications. We present a comprehensive study of the…
The first generation of ground-based interferometric gravitational wave detectors, LIGO, GEO and Virgo, have operated and taken data at their design sensitivities over the last few years. The data has been examined for the presence of…
Future ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are slated to detect black hole and neutron star collisions from the entire stellar history of the universe. To achieve the designed detector sensitivities, frequency noise from the laser…