Evan

evan at-sign uchicago dot edu

I am a fourth-year physics major working on the Fermilab Holometer.

Holometer resources

This is a collection of resources that I’ve found useful for understanding the Holometer.

Theory

The theory of holographic noise is due to Craig Hogan. As of this writing, the go-to document for the theory is

C. Hogan. Interferometers as Probes of Planckian Quantum Geometry

For an accessible review of the motivation for and features of the holographic principle, see

R. Bousso. The holographic principle. Reviews of Modern Physics, 74, 825–874 (2002).

For an overview of commutators, consult

D. Griffiths. An Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, particularly chapter 3. (Substitute with your favorite quantum mechanics textbook.)

The derivation for holographic noise involves the Moyal bracket, which comes from the Weyl–Wigner formalism of quantum mechanics. This formalism tells us how to do quantum mechanics in phase space, analogous to how Hamilton’s formalism tells us how to do classical mechanics in phase space.

For a refresher on classical mechanics in phase space, see

J. Taylor. Classical Mechanics, particularly chapter 13. (Substitute with your favorite advanced mechanics textbook.)

For a review article on the Weyl–Wigner formalism, see

M. Hillery, et al. Distribution functions in physics: Fundamentals. Physics Reports, 106, 121–67 (1984).

For a discussion of Moyal products and noncommutative geometry, see

J. Maciejko. Star product, Moyal product, deformation quantization and noncommutative geometry. (pdf)

Experiment

The grand plan for the Holometer is laid out in the proposal document:

A. Chou, et al. The Fermilab Holometer. (pdf)

The Holometer is very closely based on interferometric gravitational wave detectors like LIGO or GEO600.

These are two comprehensive pedagogical resources for learning about LIGO:

Caltech’s gravitational waves course, which comprises nineteen weeks’ worth (!) of lecture videos, slides, journal aticles, and problem sets.
Peter Saulson's book, Fundamentals of Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors. Available through the publisher.

General resources

Horowitz and Hill, The Art of Electronics, 2nd ed.
Moore, Davis, and Coplan, Building Scientific Apparatus, 4th ed.
Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, and Flannery, Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing, 3rd ed.

Lasers

These books are good all-in-one resources for a discussion of lasers and optical systems in general.

A. Siegman. Lasers.
O. Svelto. Principles of Lasers, 5th ed.

Gaussian optics

Siegman, chapters 14 through 21.
Svelto, chapters 4 and 5.
H. Kogelnik and T. Li. Laser beams and optical resonators. Applied Optics, 5, 1550–67 (1966).

Power-recycled Michelson interferometers

B. Abbott, et al. LIGO: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Reports on Progress in Physics, 72, 076901 (2009).

Cavity locking

E. Black. An introduction to Pound–Drever–Hall laser frequency stabilization. American Journal of Physics, 69, 79–87 (2001).

Control theory and feedback

J. Bechhoefer. Feedback for physicists: A tutorial essay on control. Rev. Mod. Phys., 77, 783–836 (2005).

Signal processing

E. Brigham. The Fast Fourier Transform and Its Applications. (Despite the title, a good introduction to digital signal processing in general.)

There is also a fair amount of material in Numerical Recipes.

Last updated December 2011.