Gravitational Waves: a new window to observe the Universe

The laser interferometer detectors
(continued..)
•the Fabry-Perot cavities store the beams and increase the
effective path length.
•When a gravitational wave passes through the interferometer,
this results in an effective change in the length of one or both of
the cavities.
•This length change will cause the light currently in the cavity to
become out of phase with the incoming light.
•After the two separate beams leave the arms and recombine at
the beam splitter and at the photodiode, indicating a signal.
•Light that does not contain a signal is returned to the
interferometer using a power recycling mirror, thus increasing the
power of the light in the arms.