1. Nergis Mavalvala (age 47)
Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and Associate Head Department of Physics MIT
Born: Karachi, Pakistan; naturalized US citizen – 2006
BS Wellesley College 1990
PhD Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physics 1997
Postdoctoral Scholar California Institute of Technology
Research Scientist Caltech 2000 – 2002
Physics Faculty MIT present
Honors
Sloan Foundation Fellowship 2005
John de Laeter medal Australian Institute of Physics 2006
American Physical Society Fellow 2010
MacArthur Fellowship 2010
MIT School of Science teaching prize 2012
Joseph Kiethley Prize American Physical Society 2013
Optical Society of America Fellow 2013
Science
Gravitational wave astrophysics/ experiment; 111 papers of which 69 are with the LIGO collaboration
Large baseline interferometric gravitational wave detectors: developed the automatic angular alignment system and the technique to bring the complex interferometer systems to a high sensitivity operating state (“locking” the interferometer).
Quantum physics on macroscopic scales: pioneering a program to optically trap mirrors in harmonic oscillator potentials and cool them close to their quantum ground state.
Improve large baseline detector sensitivity: developed practical techniques to use “squeezed” light in current long baseline detectors and generate concepts for third generation interferometric detectors.

2. 4 km Hanford Washington LIGO site
Gravitational wave increases travel time in one arm while reducing it in the other causing light to hit photodetector in previously balanced system.
Gravitational wave
Hanford Washington LIGO site
Among the sources LIGO hopes to detect are the chirps associated with binary coalescences of neutron stars and black holes. First measurements of strong field gravitation.
Mavalvala developed the technique to automatically align the optics to 10-9 radians and position them to 10-8 cm.
4 km
Elementary interferometer schematic
binary neutron star
coalescences 200Mpc
Initial cooling data
Advanced LIGO noise budget
Cavity experiment to optically trap and cool a 1gm mass
Mavalvala is pioneering a set of experiments to demonstrate the quantum mechanics of macroscopic objects.

3. Livingston Louisiana LIGO site
Vacuum quantum fluctuations of the radiation field entering the interferometer at the antisymmetric port (location of the photodetector) cause both phase and amplitude fluctuations of the optical field in the interferometer. Phase fluctuations cause noise in measurement of the difference in position of the end mirrors while amplitude fluctuations cause noise in the measurement of their relative momenta.
It is possible to reduce the phase or the momentum fluctuations by generating a two photon entangled state driven from the vacuum fluctuation. The entangled state (squeezed state) with proper phasing of the two photons is injected into interferometer to reduce the quantum noise.
Livingston Louisiana LIGO site
Mavalvala led the LIGO program to develop a squeezed light source and to demonstrate its performance in one of the 4km interferometers. The system will be incorporated into one of the next improvements of the instrument. It is expected to increase the sensitivity by ~ 2 and the event rate by ~ 8.