Physics - High Energy Physics Seminar

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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
E-Mail
BKOEBBE@ILLINOIS.EDU
Views
22

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.

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