About The Speaker

Moritz Mehmet recently joined Texas A&M as Research Associate Professor in Physics. He received his PhD from Leibniz Universität Hannover in 2012 for his work on the generation of strongly squeezed states of light. He continued his work at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert-Einstein-Institute, AEI) as a Postdoc, and later joined the Space-Interferometry Group at AEI to conduct research on laser interferometric testmass readout for gravity-related space missions. At Texas A&M he is now working with the Laboratory of Space Systems and Optomechanics (LASSO) at the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

Event Details

Almost 40 years after squeezed vacuum states of light were proposed to improve the sensitivity of interferometric gravitational wave (GW) detectors, both the Advanced Virgo detector and the Advanced LIGO detectors have been operating with a quantum enhanced sensitivity during their third joint observation run O3 from April 2019 to March 2020. Many years of experimental research focusing on developing the necessary concepts and technologies for the generation and application of squeezed light had been necessary to turn the conceptual idea of a non-classical sensitivity enhancement into a key technology which is now included in the baseline designs of all future earthbound GW interferometers. In my talk I will introduce the basic concepts of squeezed light generation and detection as well as their application in GW detectors. Furthermore, I will present our work on the design and construction of the squeezed light source for the Advanced Virgo GW detector and its integration on-site in Cascina, Italy, which was carried out in cooperation with the Virgo collaboration.