Gravitational radiation is one of the most important predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It has been detected indirectly through its effect on the orbital period of the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar but it has not yet been directly detected. Several gravitational radiation detectors have been built in an attempt to perform such a direct detection. These detectors are essentiall...

Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1–4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot noise, due to the quantum nature of light, imposes a fundamental limit on the attometre-level sensitivity of the kilometre-scale Michelson int...

Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1–4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot noise, due to the quantum nature of light, imposes a fundamental limit on the attometre-level sensitivity of the kilometre-scale Michelson int...

Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1–4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot noise, due to the quantum nature of light, imposes a fundamental limit on the attometre-level sensitivity of the kilometre-scale Michelson int...

Photons are neutral particles that do not interact directly with a magnetic field. However, recent theoretical work1,2 has shown that an effective magnetic field for photons can exist if the phase of light changes with its direction of propagation. This direction-dependent phase indicates the presence of an effective magnetic field, as shown experimentally for electrons in the Aharonov–Bohm exp...

Nearly a century after Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves, a global network of Earth-based gravitational wave observatories1–4 is seeking to directly detect this faint radiation using precision laser interferometry. Photon shot noise, due to the quantum nature of light, imposes a fundamental limit on the attometre-level sensitivity of the kilometre-scale Michelson int...