Gravitational-wave science is on the verge of a major step forward, thanks to a new instrumentation breakthrough led by physicist Jonathan Richardson at the University of California, Riverside. In a study published in Optica, researchers describe the creation and successful testing of FROSTI, a full-scale prototype designed to control laser wavefronts at extremely high power inside the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
LIGO is the facility that first confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime produced by massive accelerating objects such as merging black holes. This discovery provided key evidence in support of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. The observatory relies on two 4-kilometer-long laser interferometers in Washington and Louisiana to capture these faint signals, giving scientists new ways to study black holes, cosmology, and the physics of extreme matter.
