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Institut de Recherche en Mathématique et Physique

Centre de Cosmologie, Physique des Particules et Phénoménologie

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Institut de Recherche en Mathématique et Physique

Centre de Cosmologie, Physique des Particules et Phénoménologie

Physique des ondes gravitationnelles (en)

cp3 |

CP3 - Research directions and experiments
The UCLouvain gravitational-wave (GW) group contributes to the global effort to detect GWs in order to study gravity and the universe. We are active in all aspects of gravitational-wave science including astronomy, data analysis, computing, laser optics & opto-mechatronics. The group is part of the international scientific Collaboration Virgo, an operating GW detector at the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), and Einstein Telescope (ET), a planned GW observatory that could be built at the border region between Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Our group, in collaboration with laser physicists outside CP3, is active in instrumentation projects for both Virgo and ET making use of the UCLouvain laser & optics technological platform and two international research and development facilities E-TEST and ETPF. The UCLouvain GW group is also active in data analysis of the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA detectors and develops new data analysis techniques for ET. The data analysis studies, many of which are performed in collaboration with theoretical physicists and applied mathematics engineers outside CP3, make use of the CP3 computing center. Finally, our group is also giving important contributions to the development of the computing infrastructure of Virgo and ET.

Members

Academic staff
Research scientists
Physicists, engineers and computer scientists
Postdocs
PhD students
Technical staff
Interns

Projects

Click the title to show project description.
  • Commissioning and operation of instrumentation  Experimental  Instrumentation R&D 

    Gravitational wave detectors based on Michelson interferometry (such as LIGO, Virgo, ET) use very high laser powers and quantum-optics to overcome fundamental noises associated with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. However, these high optical powers present a number of challenges including:
    - Themoelastically driven changes in the mirror radii of curvature. This leads to:
    + Reduced optical power, therefore reduced sensitivity,
    + Modifications to the phase of optical control fields, limiting the operational time and power of the detectors
    + Quantum hyperloss, leading to reduced sensitivity
    - Parametric instability - an optomechanical coupling that degrades interferometer sensitivity
    - Angular instability, such as siggs-sidles.

    ET-OPT is a next-generation high-power interferometry platform being developed at UCLouvain to advance optical technologies for future gravitational-wave observatories such as the Einstein Telescope and Virgo. The project focuses on developing real-time optical mode control loops in a prototype scale infrastructure. This unlocks the following possibilities:
    - Increase optical power in today's gravitational wave detectors (such as Virgo)
    - A concrete route towards the 3 MW of optical power targeted by ET
    - New possibilities, such as the use of higher order modes for coating brownian noise reduction
    - Dynamic control of gouy phase, without causing hyperloss, thus facilitating PI suppression

    The work is carried out in close collaboration with Virgo and ET scientific consortia.