hero image
David Reitze - University of Florida. Gainesville, FL, US

David Reitze

Professor | University of Florida

Gainesville, FL, UNITED STATES

David Reitze’s research interests include femtosecond lasers and their interactions with matter gravitational-wave interferometry.

Biography

David Reitze’s research interests include femtosecond lasers and their interactions with matter, femtosecond pulse shaping, quantum control, gravitational-wave interferometry, and optical coherence tomography.

Areas of Expertise (3)

Gravitational Waves

LIGO

Astrophyics

Media Appearances (5)

European plan for gigantic new gravitational wave detector passes milestone

Science  online

2021-07-02

U.S. gravitational wave physicists welcomed the announcement, too, as they think it may bolster their plans to build a pair of detectors even bigger than the Einstein Telescope in a project called Cosmic Explorer. “In the U.S., I think the momentum is going to start to build,” says David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and a physicist at the California Institute of Technology.

view more

Veronika Tait: The scientific method will help us solve our problems

The Salt Lake Tribune  online

2021-04-29

From left, Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Exectutive Director David Reitze, LIGO Scientific Collaboration Spokesperson Gabriela Gonzalez, and Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Co-Founders Rainer Weiss and Kip Thorne, appear next to a visual of gravitational waves from two converging black holes during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016, to announce that scientists they have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. The announcement has electrified the world of astronomy, and some have likened the breakthrough to the moment Galileo took up a telescope to look at the planets.

view more

Giant gravitational wave detectors could hear murmurs from across universe

Science  online

2021-03-10

“Right now, we’re only catching the rarest, loudest events, but there’s a whole lot more, murmuring through the universe,” says Jocelyn Read, an astrophysicist at California State University, Fullerton, who’s working on the U.S. effort. Physicists hope to have the new detectors running in the 2030s, which means they have to start planning now, says David Reitze, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “Gravitational wave discoveries have captivated the world, so now is a great time to be thinking about what comes next.”

view more

The incredible story of how teaming up helped astronomers accomplish the impossible

Inverse  online

2020-11-05

Weber’s false alarm turned out to be only one of the many that would follow over the years. “So, the field actually got started in a somewhat awkward way,” laughs David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of Florida.

view more

Nobel Prize favourite David Reitze wants gravitational wave detector for Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald  online

2017-04-13

It's not every day you get to sit down with a bloke who is tipped as "guaranteed" to win the Nobel Prize for physics this year. David Reitze and his team of a thousand scientists last year announced they had found gravitational waves, the last unproven prediction emerging from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

view more

Social

Articles (5)

Observation of Gravitational Waves from Two Neutron Star–Black Hole Coalescences

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

R. Abbott, et al.

2021-06-29

We report the observation of gravitational waves from two compact binary coalescences in LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run with properties consistent with neutron star–black hole (NSBH) binaries. The two events are named GW200105_162426 and GW200115_042309, abbreviated as GW200105 and GW200115; the first was observed by LIGO Livingston and Virgo and the second by all three LIGO–Virgo detectors.

view more

Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO–Virgo Observing Run

Physical Review Letters

R. Abbott, et al.

2021-06-16

We search for gravitational-wave signals produced by cosmic strings in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo full O3 dataset. Search results are presented for gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loop features such as cusps, kinks, and, for the first time, kink-kink collisions. A template-based search for short-duration transient signals does not yield a detection.

view more

Tests of general relativity with binary black holes from the second LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog

Physical Review D

R. Abbott, et al.

2021-06-15

Gravitational waves enable tests of general relativity in the highly dynamical and strong-field regime. Using events detected by LIGO-Virgo up to 1 October 2019, we evaluate the consistency of the data with predictions from the theory. We first establish that residuals from the best-fit waveform are consistent with detector noise, and that the low- and high-frequency parts of the signals are in agreement.

view more

GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First Half of the Third Observing Run

Physical Review X

R. Abbott, et al.

2021-06-09

We report on gravitational-wave discoveries from compact binary coalescences detected by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo in the first half of the third observing run (O3a) between 1 April 2019 15 ∶ 00 UTC and 1 October 2019 15 ∶ 00 UTC. By imposing a false-alarm-rate threshold of two per year in each of the four search pipelines that constitute our search, we present 39 candidate gravitational-wave events. At this threshold, we expect a contamination fraction of less than 10%.

view more

Population Properties of Compact Objects from the Second LIGO–Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

R. Abbott, et al.

2021-05-19

We report on the population of 47 compact binary mergers detected with a false-alarm rate of false-alarm rate of

view more

Media

Publications:

Documents:

Photos:

loading image loading image

Videos:

David Reitze, The Detection of Gravitational Waves: The Role of Large International Collaborations Dr. David Reitze, Executive Director, LIGO | Gravitational Waves Revolution | World Space Week '20 LIGO Exploration Center LIGO Laboratory Director David Reitze Dr. David Reitze | Director, LIGO Laboratory | Teaser

Audio/Podcasts: