Related papers: Automatic Mirror Alignment for VIRGO: First experi…
FRAM - F/(Ph)otometric Robotic Atmospheric Monitor is the latest addition to the atmospheric monitoring instruments of the Pierre Auger Observatory. An optical telescope equipped with CCD camera and photometer, it automatically observes a…
The Matter-Wave laser Interferometer Gravitation Antenna, MIGA, will be a hybrid instrument composed of a network of atom interferometers horizontally aligned and interrogated by the resonant field of an optical cavity. This detector will…
LIGO --- The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory --- is one of several large projects being undertaken in the United States, Europe and Japan to detect gravitational radiation. The novelty and precision of these instruments…
We present the design and implementation of a side entry laser system designed for an ultra-high vacuum scanning transmission electron microscope. This system uses a versatile probe design enclosed in a vacuum envelope such that parts can…
We present the first experimental implementation of a polarization-circulation speed meter. In our experiment, the interferometer was reduced to a single-cavity configuration with all mirrors fixed. A green-locking scheme was employed to…
The NGVS-IR project (Next Generation Virgo Survey - Infrared) is a contiguous near-infrared imaging survey of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It complements the optical wide-field survey of Virgo (NGVS). The current state of NGVS-IR consists…
Aperture Masking Interferometry used in combination with Adaptive Optics, is a powerful technique that permits the detection of faint companions at small angular separations. The precision calibration of the data achieved with this…
This paper presents the design and technical progress of a precision X-Y stage for detector dithering and flexure compensation. The stage is being developed for use in the Magellan InfraRed Multi-Object Spectrograph, MIRMOS. MIRMOS is a…
We describe an experiment in which we have used a cold damping feedback mechanism to reduce the thermal noise of a mirror around its mechanical resonance frequency. The monitoring of the brownian motion of the mirror allows to apply an…
We report on the fabrication and characterization of a micromechanical oscillator consisting only of a free-standing dielectric Bragg mirror with high optical reflectivity and high mechanical quality. The fabrication technique is a hybrid…
The absolute calibration of an air fluorescence detector (FD) is an important element in correctly determining the energy of detected cosmic rays. The absolute calibration relates the flux of photons of a given wavelength at the detector…
Quantum mechanics predicts superposition of position states even for macroscopic objects. Recently, the use of a quasi-freely suspended mirror combined with laser was proposed to prepare such states, by M\"uller-Ebhardt et al.…
The first detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 launched the era of gravitational wave astronomy. The quest for gravitational wave signals from objects that are fainter or…
We describe a laser interferometer experiment for the undergraduate teaching laboratory that achieves picometer sensitivity in a hands-on table-top instrument. In addition to providing an introduction to interferometer physics and optical…
We report on the status of the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the plans and progress towards Enhanced and Advanced LIGO. The initial LIGO detectors have finished a two year long data run during which a full…
In this paper we demonstrate that a double Michelson interferometer with Fabry-Perot cavities in its arms is able to perform laser- and displacement-noise-free gravitational-wave (GW) detection if certain model assumptions are met. Assuming…
Atom interferometry has become one of the most powerful technologies for precision measurements. To develop simple, precise, and versatile atom interferometers for inertial sensing, we demonstrate an atom interferometer measuring…
The Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors will be installed starting in 2011, with completion scheduled for 2015. The new detectors will improve the strain sensitivity of current instruments by a factor of ten, with a thousandfold…
Gravitational wave interferometers are complex instruments, requiring years of commissioning to achieve the required sensitivities for the detection of gravitational waves, of order 10^-21 in dimensionless detector strain, in the tens of Hz…
The detection of gravitational waves from compact binary mergers by LIGO has opened the era of gravitational wave astronomy, revealing a previously hidden side of the cosmos. To maximize the reach of the existing LIGO observatory…