Gingin High Optical Power Test Facility

Abstract

The Australian Consortium for Gravitational Wave Astronomy (ACIGA) in collaboration with LIGO is developing a high optical power research facility at the AIGO site, Gingin, Western Australia. Research at the facility will provide solutions to the problems that advanced gravitational wave detectors will encounter with extremely high optical power. The problems include thermal lensing and parametric instabilities. This article will present the status of the facility and the plan for the future experiments.