Optical Trapping of Microdisks for Detection of Gravitational Waves

POSTER

Abstract

We present an update on the Levitated Sensor Detector (LSD) project for detection of high frequency (10-100kHz) gravitational waves above the region previously probed by LIGO. Motivated sources of gravitational waves in this frequency range include superradiance from QCD axion clouds around spinning black holes. The experiment will make use of optically levitated flat dielectric micro-scale particles as force sensors with the advantage of reduced photon recoil heating. We therefore discuss initial experimental trapping and cooling results of high-aspect-ratio NaYF4 hexagonal prisms. Additionally, we present information radiation patterns (IRPs) calculated from numerical simulations of light scattering for various shapes and sizes of particles, including hexagonal prisms, which are used to make improvements to position detection schemes in our levitated particle systems. Finally, we examine the experimental progress of the 1-meter LSD prototype that is in construction at Northwestern University.

*This work was partially supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation, the Office of Naval Research grant no.417315//N00014-18-1-2370, the National Science Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Publication: G. Winstone, S. Klomp, et al., Optical trapping of high-aspect-ratio NaYF hexagonal prisms for kHz-MHz gravitational wave detectors, Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 053604 (2022).
S. Liang, S. Klomp, et al., Optimal displacement detection of arbitrarily-shaped levitated dielectric objects using optical radiation, arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.00782 (2024).

Presenters

  • Shelby Klomp

    • Northwestern University

Authors

  • Shelby Klomp

    • Northwestern University

  • George Winstone

    • Northwestern University

  • Zhiyuan Wang

    • Northwestern University

  • Shafaq Elahi

    • Northwestern University

  • Shaun Liang

    • Swansea University

  • Lars Forberger

    • University of Washington

  • Andrew Dana

    • Northwestern University

  • Alexey Grinin

    • Northwestern University

  • Andrew Steven Laeuger

    • Caltech

  • Jacob Sprague

    • Northwestern University

  • James Bateman

    • Swansea University

  • Peter Pauzauskie

    • University of Washington

  • Nancy Aggarwal

    • UCDavis

  • Shane L Larson

    • Northwestern University

  • Vicky Kalogera

    • Northwestern University

  • Andrew Albert Geraci

    • Northwestern University