High Energy Physics Seminar - Michael Wentzel (UIUC) - A Superconductor Levitated Detector of Gravitational Waves at the Quantum Limit
- Event Type
- Seminar/Symposium
- Sponsor
- Department of Physics
- Location
- Room 464
- Date
- Apr 12, 2024 11:00 am
- Speaker
- Michael Wentzel(UIUC)
- Contact
- Brandy Koebbe
- BKOEBBE@ILLINOIS.EDU
- Views
- 72
- Originating Calendar
- Physics - High Energy Physics Seminar
A magnetically levitated mass couples to gravity and can act as a gravitational wave detector. We show that when excited by a gravitational wave, a superconducting sphere levitated in a quadrupolar magnetic field will produce fluctuations in the background magnetic field that can be read out using a radio frequency quantum upconverter. With a readout operating at the standard quantum limit, such a system achieves broadband strain noise sensitivity of h ~ 10^-21 for frequencies of ~1 MHz -1 GHz, opening new corridors for cosmological and astrophysical probes of new physics.