Listening to the quantum vacuum

Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Thomas Corbitt and his team of researchers now present the first broadband, off-resonance measurement of quantum radiation pressure noise in the audio band, at frequencies relevant to gravitational wave detectors, as reported in the scientific journal Nature.

Since the historic finding of gravitational waves from two black holes colliding over a billion light years away was made in 2015, physicists are advancing knowledge about the limits on the precision of the measurements that will help improve the next generation of tools and technology used by gravitational wave scientists.

Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Thomas Corbitt and his team of researchers now present the first broadband, off-resonance measurement of quantum radiation pressure noise in the audio band, at frequencies relevant to gravitational wave detectors, as reported today in the scientific journal Nature.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, or NSF, and the results hint at methods to improve the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors by developing techniques to mitigate the imprecision in measurements called "back action," thus increasing the chances of detecting gravitational waves.

Corbitt and researchers have developed physical devices that make it possible to observe -- and hear -- quantum effects at room temperature. It is often easier to measure quantum effects at very cold temperatures, while this approach brings them closer to human experience. Housed in miniature models of detectors like LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, located in Livingston, La., and Hanford, Wash., these devices consist of low-loss, single-crystal micro-resonators -- each a tiny mirror pad the size of a pin prick, suspended from a cantilever. A laser beam is directed at one of these mirrors, and as the beam is reflected, the fluctuating radiation pressure is enough to bend the cantilever structure, causing the mirror pad to vibrate, which creates noise.

Gravitational wave interferometers use as much laser power as possible in order to minimize the uncertainty caused by the measurement of discrete photons and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. These higher power beams increase position accuracy but also increase back action, which is the uncertainty in the number of photons reflecting from a mirror that corresponds to a fluctuating force due to radiation pressure on the mirror, causing mechanical motion. Other types of noise, such as thermal noise, usually dominate over quantum radiation pressure noise, but Corbitt and his team, including collaborators at MIT, have sorted through them. Advanced LIGO and other second and third generation interferometers will be limited by quantum radiation pressure noise at low frequencies when running at their full laser power. Corbitt's paper in Nature offers clues as to how researchers can work around this when measuring gravitational waves.

"Given the imperative for more sensitive gravitational wave detectors, it is important to study the effects of quantum radiation pressure noise in a system similar to Advanced LIGO, which will be limited by quantum radiation pressure noise across a wide range of frequencies far from the mechanical resonance frequency of the test mass suspension," Corbitt said.

Corbitt's former academic advisee and lead author of the Nature paper, Jonathan Cripe, graduated from LSU with a Ph.D. in physics last year and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

"Day-to-day at LSU, as I was doing the background work of designing this experiment and the micro-mirrors and placing all of the optics on the table, I didn't really think about the impact of the future results," Cripe said. "I just focused on each individual step and took things one day at a time. [But] now that we have completed the experiment, it really is amazing to step back and think about the fact that quantum mechanics -- something that seems otherworldly and removed from the daily human experience -- is the main driver of the motion of a mirror that is visible to the human eye. The quantum vacuum, or 'nothingness,' can have an effect on something you can see."

Read more at Science Daily

A Giant Gravity Wave Has Been Found in Venus' Clouds

Venus is wrapped in thick clouds of sulfuric acid that swirl around the planet at 225 mph, but not everything in the atmosphere is moving.

On Dec. 7, 2015, during its very first orbit around Venus, Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft discovered a mammoth, bow-shaped structure in the upper atmosphere that remained oddly fixed over a mountainous region known as the western highlands of Aphrodite.

The structure, which stretched for 6,200 miles across the sky, remained fixed in place until Dec. 11. Five days later, when Akatsuki's longwave infrared camera was next available to make observations, the bright region was gone.

"We believe it is generated by a gravity wave," physicist Makoto Taguchi, with Rikkyo University in Tokyo, wrote in an email to Seeker. "We examined every possibility, such as a thermal tide or an instrumental error, but all of them except for a gravity wave were excluded."

Like on Earth, gravity waves on Venus could be triggered by disturbances in stable layers of the atmosphere, such as the flow of wind over a mountain range. The effect is similar to ripples that are caused by dropping a stone into a pool of water.

Gravity waves are not to be confused with the recently detected cosmological phenomenon known as gravitational waves, which are caused by the bending of space and time due to extremely massive objects, such as colliding black holes.

Taguchi and colleagues, writing in this week's Nature Geoscience, said they believe Venus' mountains caused a gravity wave to form in the lower atmosphere. The bow-shaped structure, which was hotter than surrounding atmosphere, then rose up to an altitude of about 40 miles.

Computer models show a gravity wave on Venus could propagate to such an enormous size and altitude, but more work is needed to understand the planet's near-surface conditions, the scientists said.

"We suggest that winds in the deep atmosphere may be spatially or temporally more variable than previously thought," the paper said.

Additional observations with Akatsuki, which is expected to remain operational until mid-2018, are underway.

From Discovery News