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Caltech’s Yanbei Chen describes how he uses data from LIGO and other instruments to probe relativity and the fundamentals of quantum mechanics.
California Institute of Technology
Yanbei Chen made major contributions to understanding the noise of laser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors that arise from quantum fluctuations of light and matter. He proposed conceptual interferometer designs that can achieve better sensitivity — also formulating a vision for experimentally testing quantum mechanics and quantum measurement theory on macroscopic objects. Chen made important contributions to gravitational-wave data-analysis strategies and works on using gravitational-wave observations to test the predictions of general relativity in strong gravity and to study the structures of black holes. He is a 2018 Simons Investigator.