Squeezing the future of Gravitational Wave Detectors par David McClelland

David McClelland
Centre for Gravitational Physics, Department of Quantum Science
Research School of Physics and Engineering
The Australian National University

In February 2016, the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations announced the detection of gravitational waves and with it the beginning of the new field of gravitational wave astronomy. As with all fields of astronomy, the quest to understand the universe will demand detectors with better and better sensitivity. Future interferometric detectors of gravitational waves are predicted to be primarily limited by quantum noise. Non-classical states of light will thus feature in driving the sensitivity of such detectors to sense the universe out to cosmological distances. In this talk, after briefly introducing gravitational waves and GW astronomy, I will review possible/proposed detector configurations, examine requirements on squeezed light sources imposed by these configurations and summarise where we are at currently.