Alexa Staley is a PhD candidate at Columbia University in the City of New York, and has been working as a graduate student at the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Richland, WA.

The next generation gravitational wave interferometers, known as Advanced LIGO, located in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA have been installed and are in the process of achieving a sensitivity required for the first direct detection of a gravitational wave. The goal of their design is to measure a gravitational strain as small as 4×10^–24/√Hz, requiring a length resolution of approximately 10^–19 rms within a 100 Hz bandwidth. This high sensitivity demands multiple optical cavities to enhance the response Continue reading →