CMS, LIGO Collaborate for MARS Conference Presentation

In collaboration with Garrett Cole, co-founder of Crystalline Mirror Solutions (CMS) GmbH, David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and professor at the California Institute of Technology, will present an overview of the current status and prospects for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors at the Machine Learning, Home Automation, Robotics and Space Exploration (MARS) Conference sponsored by Amazon.

The MARS Conference is an invitation-only event. From March 18 to 21, attendees will join Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, in California for three days of talks, demonstrations and experimentations. In addition to technical demonstrations and afternoon activities, the program also consists of a select set of technical talks. This year, Reitze will present an overview of the current status of the LIGO collaboration and will describe prospects for realizing enhanced sensitivity via near-term improvements as well as the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors.

“Improving the performance of these advanced astronomical instruments is essential for probing deeper into our universe,” Reitze said. “The ultimate aim of developing upgraded instruments is to realize a sensitivity gain that yields both daily observations and enables the discovery of new types of gravitational-wave sources.”

As detailed in the presentation, further optimization of the LIGO interferometers to achieve enhanced event rates will vastly extend the gravitational-wave horizon on our universe. Working towards the realization of improved gravitational-wave detectors, CMS has developed a novel crystalline coating technology capable of a significant reduction in Brownian noise, a limiting factor for the advanced LIGO interferometers. Reitze will highlight this in the MARS presentation.

“The unique single-crystal coatings developed by CMS surmount a decade-old roadblock in precision measurement,” Cole said. In the five years following incorporation, CMS has worked with universities and metrology labs to deploy their optics in the world’s most precise optical atomic clocks. Since the early days of technology development, LIGO has been a key collaborator and supporter.

“Being invited to the MARS Conference and having our technology featured in a presentation by Dr. Reitze is a huge honor for the team at CMS,” Cole said.