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A study done by Michael A. Page, Maxim Goryachev, Haixing Miao, and peers states that WLCs can be used to improve the sensitivity of LIGO. LIGO currently uses photons (for very constant speed at which they travel in a vacuum), but if the phononic crystals were integrated into the structure of LIGO itself how would the phonons travel in a vacuum (considering they're mechanical waves). My physics teacher mentioned something about it travelling on the g-wave but refused to elaborate.

Link to Study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-021-00526-2)

Link to Article (https://theconversation.com/a-tiny-crystal-device-could-boost-gravitational-wave-detectors-to-reveal-the-birth-cries-of-black-holes-155125)

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    $\begingroup$ Well, the crystal isn't in the interferometer arms and it is still the interferometer that is generating the signal. $\endgroup$
    – ProfRob
    Jan 16, 2022 at 21:22
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    $\begingroup$ @GursimranRandhawa the phononic crystal is a thin, mostly transparent sheet suspended transverse to the light beam inside the 30 cm long resonator ("negative dispersion filter cavity") shown at the bottom right of Figure 1 a/b of your linked Page et al. 2021 . It will certainly be vacuum inside that cavity outside of that thin sheet. As ProfRob points out, this cavity is a reflector in the recirculator, off to the side of the interferometer, not in it. I'm not sure if that helps though. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Jan 16, 2022 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ A quick skim of your links suggests that the photon-phonon interaction takes place entirely within the thin-sheet phononic crystal. Think of that crystal as an amplifier/filter for all the photons which interact with it. $\endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    Jan 17, 2022 at 14:51

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