New Windows on Fundamental Physics: from tabletop devices to large scale detectors

Session

Thursday Afternoon I

22 Jan 2026, 14:00

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Lecture Theatre (University of Manchester)

Conveners

Thursday Afternoon I

• Jamie McDonald (University of Manchester)

17. Probing the gravity-quantum interface with interferometers and nanoparticles

Animesh Datta (University of Warwick)

22/01/2026, 14:00

Talk (main workshop)

Proposed theories of harmonizing gravity and quantum mechanics at low energies suggest novel features such as fluctuations in the spacetime metric and collapse of massive quantum superpositions. How can these features be probed experimentally?

We have recently shown how high-precision tabletop laser interferometers can distinguish different classes of spacetime fluctuations as characterized...

60. DRD5

Steven Worm

22/01/2026, 14:30

27. Levitated Optomechanical Sensors

Andrew Geraci

22/01/2026, 15:00

47. Towards ultra-low backgrounds for high-efficiency transition edge sensors in optical and infrared axion searches

Manuel Meyer

22/01/2026, 15:30

Talk (main workshop)

Cryogenic transition edge sensors (TESs) are single photon detectors featuring excellent energy resolution below 10% and high quantum efficiency at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. If black-body backgrounds can be suppressed to sufficiently low levels, such detectors would be ideally suited for experiments searching for photon-axion conversion at these wavelengths such as...