Abstract:
Optically levitated sensors inside a Fabry–Pérot cavity have been proposed for high-frequency gravitational-wave detection, but their optimal configuration exhibits a counterintuitive spatial asymmetry.
We provide a fully relativistic derivation of the interaction between a gravitational wave and a levitated object in an optical cavity and explain the asymmetry from multiple gauge perspectives. We also highlight some important consequences of the asymmetry for noise couplings in the experiment. We then consider the behavior of the experiment with levitated dieletric sensors of finite thickness and substantial areal extent, outlining a procedure for self-consistently computing the response of the cavity-sensor system to external perturbations. We demonstrate that even when the sensor is relatively optically thin, it sources substantial reorganization of the cavity fields, generating noticeable deviations from the standard perturbation theory predictions which are typically used to describe levitated sensors.
Speaker: Andrew Laeuger, Graduate Student, Caltech
Host: Andrew Geraci
Keywords: Physics, CFP
Laura Nevins
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