Hobart and William Smith received a $50,984 National Science Foundation award in August to support optical-coating research involving physics professor Steven Penn, whose work helps improve mirrors used in highly precise scientific instruments.
The award for “Collaborative Research: Center for Coatings Research” supports a team led by Stanford University's Martin Fejer, with Penn and eight other researchers, according to the colleges' announcement. It follows a $1.077 million NSF grant HWS received in 2023 for a three-year project led by Penn.
The research concerns coatings for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors, with the goal of making instruments more sensitive. It is continuing research, not an announcement that a new detector has been completed.
Coatings help instruments detect tiny changes
The August issue of Optica featured a cover review coauthored by Penn, “Redefining Precision Interferometry and Spectroscopy with High-Performance Optical Interference Coatings.” The article surveys supermirrors: mirrors with very high reflectivity and very low noise.
Such mirrors are needed for experiments detecting distant gravitational waves or measuring tiny differences in time. The review draws on work from labs including Syracuse, Arizona and Stanford, along with JILA and Germany's PTB. It cites three of Penn's research papers.
Although coatings are typically less than one-tenth the thickness of a human hair, their noise can limit measurement precision. Instruments use stabilized lasers reflected from mirrors to detect very small changes in distance. HWS says LIGO measures distances a billion times smaller than the atoms in its mirror coatings.
Reducing coating noise can make detectors more sensitive to signals from distant cosmic events. Penn is working on next-generation coatings intended to let LIGO detect events several times farther into the universe.
Research builds on LIGO collaboration
Penn has participated in the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration for more than two decades and helped develop the detector's current mirrors, the colleges said.
The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne for the gravitational-wave discovery made possible by the collaboration. Penn and other collaborators received the Special Breakthrough Prize in Physics in 2016.
The new NSF award continues work on improving optical coatings. The earlier HWS grant supports developing and studying coatings for more sensitive gravitational-wave detectors.
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