PRESCOTT / LONDON (IT BOLTWISE) – Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University are working to improve mirrors that could allow scientists to hear fainter and more distant cosmic collisions. These advances could revolutionize the detection of gravitational waves and expand our understanding of the universe.
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Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott are working to improve mirrors that could make it possible to hear fainter and more distant cosmic collisions, such as merging black holes or colliding neutron stars. This research is conducted in the LIGO Optics Lab on the Prescott Campus, where space physics graduate student Ari Chai and aerospace engineering graduate student Ambroise Juston, among others, are involved in the development of supermirrors.
About a decade ago, astronomers first heard gravitational waves, the space-time ripples predicted by Einstein, using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Since then, LIGO and similar observatories have detected about 300 gravitational wave events. These observatories measure tiny distortions thousands of times smaller than the diameter of an atom, relying on mirrors of exceptional precision.
Students investigate how these mirrors can be improved by studying a subtle effect called birefringence, which describes microscopic differences in how light propagates through the mirror material. Understanding and minimizing this effect could one day help scientists hear further and more clearly into the universe, says Dr. Elizabeth Gretarsson, assistant professor of physics and astronomy.
The research is part of an ongoing collaboration between Embry-Riddle, Caltech’s LIGO laboratory, the University of Arizona, American University and Syracuse University. The Prescott Campus has one of the few laboratories in the United States equipped for optical studies of gravitational waves. This type of hands-on, impactful research defines an Embry-Riddle education and could significantly influence the future of gravitational wave astronomy.
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