Advanced LIGO: Speculations about the Future of Gravitational Wave Detectors

What might the future of the LIGO detectors look like? Although the interferometers are not yet at design sensitivity, Advanced LIGO has already detected gravitational waves from merging black holes and from merging neutron stars. And the future looks bright - many improvements are now underway as we push the detectors towards design sensitivity. Exotic plans for squeezed light, new optical coatings, low temperature silicon optics, and even new facilities are now being discussed in the community. I will discuss some of the ideas being pursued, and highlight the work Stanford is doing to open up this new field of astronomy.

Speaker: Brian Lantz, Stanford