Palmer Trinity School

trying to find a way to measure them. The problem is that even the strongest GWs were predicted to be incredibly weak by the time they reached the earth. Miraculously, many generations of brilliant people made the detection of GWs possible, and the first signal was registered by LIGO on September 14, 2015. For this, three pioneers of GW detection science were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017. At its core, each LIGO detector consists of a set of "test masses"—one-hundred-pound mirrors made of ultra-pure glass—suspended 4 kilometers (about 2.5 miles) away from each other within a giant vacuum tank, with an intricate laser system measuring the distances between them to an accuracy of far smaller than the diameter of a proton. As a GW passes through the earth, it ever so slightly stretches and shrinks the space between these test masses, and these vibrations are detected with the laser system. The majority of LIGO experimental science involves isolating these test masses from the overwhelmingly stronger sources of vibration and noise on the surface of the earth. With a drastically better understanding of LIGO as a whole, I went back to UF for my senior year and worked on a new experiment involving adaptive optical elements, or controllable lenses. This experiment involved using special, small lenses that we could heat and pass an incoming beam through. After this, we could measure and cancel out unwanted focusing effects within the main detector. This research, along with similar work from other groups, helped design the LIGO Thermal Compensation System. After graduating with my B.S. in physics from UF, I was lucky enough to be accepted at Caltech to continue working in LIGO at one of its two academic bases. In my first few years at Caltech, I worked on something called a laser gyroscope—a tabletop system used to measure very small tilts of the ground. We humans don't notice it, but the ground below our feet is constantly moving at a level some trillion times greater than what we try to measure with LIGO. In late 2012, I was given yet another life-changing opportunity when I was awarded the LIGO Student Fellowship, which allowed me to move to one of the actual LIGO detector sites in Livingston, Louisiana for the better part of two years. While there, I served on a small team of physicists and engineers who were installing the upgrades to LIGO that ultimately made GW detection possible, known as "Advanced LIGO." The work was hard, but it was immensely rewarding. Most days, we worked into the wee hours of the morning when the lack of cars on nearby roads gave us the kind of quiet seismic environment we needed to test the ultra-sensitive apparatus we were working on. In 2014, I made the decision to move back to Caltech and work on an entirely new project for my thesis. After this, I have no idea what comes next. Whatever happens, I hope to end up in a place where I can continue to learn and contribute to our understanding of the world around us—that's what's always kept me going! I'm very proud of the contributions I've been able to make in my life so far. Palmer Trinity has played a major role in my journey, and I'll never forget that. Above, from left – UV gluing optical cavity; LIGO control room zk Hanford. Opposite page, top – Zach Korth at LIGO; bottom – Inspecting suspension. 53 S UMME R 2018 S UMME R 2018

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