Detection of Quantum Effects in Gravitational Waves

While the detection of a single graviton is expected to be unattainable with current gravitational waves and particle detectors, collective statistical behaviours have not been ruled out. In this presentation we discuss the detectabiility of quantum GW effects with ground based laser interferometers. Any type of experimental evidence will be invaluable to provide constraints to the quantum theory of Gravity. More explicitly, we expect poissonian fluctuations in the number of captured gravitons at each of the interferometers (similarly to the rate of captured neutrinos at ICE cube or superkamiokande), and these fluctuations could also be correlated between interferometers sites since Gravitons in the LIGO sensitive bands could have DeBroglie wavelenghts of the order of thousands of Kilometers. We need to have a deterministic signal to subtract from the detection and then search for the residual signatures.

The work involves 3 main areas:

(a) estimate the cramer rao lower bound in estimating the variance of the fluctuations to assess under which conditions it is smaller than the variance itself.

(b) modify and existing GW detection software (coherent waveburst) to search in the residual signal for these fluctuations.

(c) identifythe most appropriate GW signals for this activity.