Gravitational Wave Detection with Laser Interferometry

 In this decade, the detection of gravitational radiation from astrophysical sources will become commonplace. The 2nd generation interferometers in the U.S., Italy, Japan, and possibly Australia or India, will be the components of a global network capable of localizing sources in the sky; this will allow us to form a pictures of the most violent events in the universe with both electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. I will describe how these interferometers can measure space-time strains which produce displacements 100 thousand times smaller than the size of a proton and a vison for future upgrades to extend their reach back to the merger of the first black holes in the universe.


 About Prof. Rana Adhikari:

Prof. Rana Adhikari is leading research on many aspects of the advanced LIGO detector for gravitational waves and also is the project leader for the Caltech 40 m prototype detector.