Historical research guide · 0553 · 2012
Interactions Between Superconductors and High-Frequency Gravitational Waves
R. C. Woods
In one minute
Clive Woods opens the Modanese and Robertson volume’s technical half with the question the whole field turns on: does a superconductor do anything unusual to a gravitational wave? A gravitational wave is a ripple in the shape of space itself, and at high frequency — far above the black-hole mergers the big observatories catch — several authors have argued that coherent quantum matter should reflect it, absorb it, or convert it into an electromagnetic signal and back again. Other authors have argued just as firmly that it should not. Woods reviews both sides, source by source, rather than picking one. Then he does the useful thing. If the predicted interactions are real, he asks, what could you build with them? He works through a set of applications in detail, and points out that each one is also an experiment: build the device, and whether it works tells you which side of the argument was right. He is well placed to ask, having run an independent bench test of gravity modification by high-temperature superconductors himself.
Connection
Chapter 11 needs an honest map of who proposes what about superconductors and gravity, and this is that map, written by someone who has been on the apparatus. It also gives chapter 4 the most practical version of the metric-engineering question — a laboratory device that converts between electromagnetic and gravitational radiation — and gives chapter 1 a model for how a disagreement becomes hardware: build the discriminating apparatus. Read it with Inan, Thompson and Chiao’s full theoretical treatment at /library/stm-1bb9e8dfb4 and with Gary Stephenson’s buildable gaser design at /library/stm-d271c3eebb.
From the source
Interactions between superconductors and high-frequency gravitational waves have been predicted by a number of authors, while others identify unresolved theoretical and experimental gaps.Abstract, first sentence
The evidence for and against possible sources of interaction is reviewed in the chapter, source by source, rather than argued from one side.Abstract, second sentence
Assuming the veracity of the claims allows a number of possible applications to be considered — devices that would exist only because a superconductor couples to gravitational radiation.Abstract, third sentence
Those applications may double as experimental tests of the results, and a number of them are considered in detail as possible ways to clarify the current controversial position: building the device is itself the measurement that would settle the argument.Abstract, third and fourth sentences
The review is written from inside the experimental side of the field: its author is the R. C. Woods of the Sheffield group that ran an independent test of gravity modification by high-temperature superconductors, published by the AIAA in 2001.Chapter authorship, publisher’s contents listing, pages 23 to 57; the author’s own experimental paper is doi 10.2514/6.2001-3363
The way in
https://doi.org/10.2174/978160805399511201010023How to cite it
R. C. Woods (2012) Interactions Between Superconductors and High-Frequency Gravitational Waves doi:10.2174/978160805399511201010023