European Graduate College

The European Graduate College started in January 2001:

"Interference and Quantum Applications" (EGC Website)

The research areas of the college belong to the fields of atomic and molecular physics and to quantum optics. Applications range from atomic optics to nanolithography, include research on Big Science facilities such as gravitational wave detectors or studying new atomic clocks.

The college will bring together PhD students from France, Scotland, and Germany - not only for an exchange of ideas but also to work closely with each other in the same laboratory for some time and thus learning different ways of thinking, feeling and approaching scientific tasks

Coordinator for the University of Hannover: Prof. Dr. E. Tiemann, Institute for Quantum Optics, Tel.: +49-511-762-3306.

Research Program

The contribution of the Institute for Gravitational Physics to the research program of the EGC derives from the work on the improvement of gravitational wave detectors which is done at the insitute:

1. Constructing and operating the gravitational wave detector GEO600;
2. Research on a 10 m laser interferometer with the objective of testing new methods for enhancing the detector sensitivity;
3. Operation of an interferometer at the Heisenberg quantum limit and to prove techniques to go below it;
4. Research on media with negativ dispersion and vanishing absorption for building a white light resonator;
5. New concepts to improve and stabilize the laser for LISA, the laser interferometer in space.