Congratulations to Janis Wöhler for completing his PhD! Janis’ thesis was titled “Direct measurement of coating thermal noise at the AEI 10m Prototype” which was centred around work on the thermal noise interferometer (TNI). Janis was able to bring the noise of the TNI to a level of 1 · 10⁻¹⁸ m/√Hz and successfully measured […]

The core beam splitter for the Sub-SQL Interferometer has been installed into the vacuum system and is now freely hanging in its triple suspension system. Unlike typical beam splitters used in gravitational wave detectors, the shape of our beam splitter is rectangular rather than round. This is because the beam splitter should be wide enough […]

Congratulations to Philip Koch for successfully defending his PhD thesis titled “Design, Suspension and Optical Characterization of the Beam Splitter and Output Mode Cleaner for the AEI 10 m Prototype”. Philip’s thesis work covered a range of topics including: the thickness homogeneity of crystalline AlGaAs/GaAs high reflectivity coatings the design, construction and characterisation of the […]