Quiet Lasers

barkster
barkster
Joined: 3 Apr 05
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Chipper Q
Chipper Q
Joined: 20 Feb 05
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RE: Article on


Sounds like quite an improvement, in the article it says:

Quote:
"Using the squeezed light that we can generate, we can extend the reach of gravitational wave detectors by a factor of three", according to Roman Schnabel. This would enable the observation of black hole collisions at the edge of the universe.


That's not bad since there surely must be lots of BH mergers taking place in the intervening distance.

It also looks fairly easy to implement, adding a second laser and crystal to squeeze the light from the primary laser.

Quantum mechanical entanglement helps to provide a more even distribution of the random bunches of photons in the primary laser beam, it's fascinating. Tullio mentioned entanglement (along with www.qubit.org) recently in a different thread, and it was neat to learn about how difficult number-crunching might be done in a “probabilistic� fashion that takes fewer steps to yield a correct answer than the “deterministic� way of crunching number for number. And a “quantum Fourier transform� can be made with just 2 types of quantum gates, so I can't help but wonder how the LIGO scientists would benefit from an array of QFTs...

@ ilknur: here's a link to the article - The world's lowest noise laser: researchers outsmart quantum physics

barkster
barkster
Joined: 3 Apr 05
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Credit: 447,475
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Long time, Chipper! and

Long time, Chipper! and thanks for the response.

It's been awhile since I've looked thru the message boards. I'm in the last 2 weeks of a one year deployment in East Africa. Happy to get my mind re-engaged in mental pursuits that make me sleep easier at night.

I guess that just saying that LIGO can see three time farther into the universe was a bit too simplistic for my curiosity. What might that improvement mean in other terms:
Ability to detect "smoother" pulsars?
Ability to detect other types of GW emitting bodies?
Ability to detect merging binaries earlier?

More??

Cheers,
Glenn

"No, I'm not a scientist... but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express."

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