Gravitational Wave (GW) observatories are humanity’s newest tool for studying the universe. After decades of development efforts, terrestrial interferometers such as LIGO and Virgo are now routinely detecting ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by distant astrophysical cataclysms such as the collision of black holes. Early results from these instruments have already provided answers to...
The Galactic Center harbors the nearest massive black hole. With a distance of only 8 kpc, it is the closest laboratory to study the astrophysical processes at work in these extreme objects, and to probe Einstein's general theory of relativity in the regime of strong gravity. Our presentation gives an overview of the GRAVITY infrared interferometry observations leading to the detection of the...
Ultra-precisely stabilised lasers are the interferometric light sources at the heart of gravitational wave detectors. To achieve ever-higher detection rates for meaningful gravitational wave astronomy, ever-greater detection sensitivity is required. In this talk I will introduce the principle of interferometric gravitational wave detection, and highlight some of the advanced technologies...
