G. H. Ogin

Thermal fluctuations in the coatings used to make high reflectors are becoming significant noise sources in precision optical measurements and are particularly relevant to advanced gravitational-wave detectors. There are two recognized sources of coating thermal noise; mechanical loss and thermal dissipation. Thermal dissipation causes thermal fluctuations in the coating which produce noise via the thermoelastic and thermorefractive mechanisms. We treat these mechanisms coherently, give a correction for finite coating thickness, and evaluate the implications for Advanced LIGO.

First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents for spending the last 30 years reinforcing the idea that my education is a top priority for them (and in turn instilling it as a top priority for me). Thanks to all the great teachers I’ve had, from elementary school through graduate school, for pushing me forward and putting up with my antics. Thanks to my great advisers at the University of St. Thomas, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Caltech, who kept me going through the tough parts of research and truly set me up to succeed in the world of science. Thanks to my friends and loved ones, both in school and out, who kept me sane throughout the process. And last but not least, thanks to Caltech and the National Science Foundation (award PHY-0757058) for supporting me financially through the past seven years of

Using a pump-probe Michelson experiment, we test the theory of thermo-optic (TO) effects in dielectric mirror coatings. We observe partial cancellation between coating expansion and TO effects. We also measure relevant thin film material parameters.