Phase Vision Details

Since their first direct detection in 2015, gravitational waves have opened a new window into observing the universe's most energetic events. Current detectors like LIGO require kilometer-scale laser interferometers that measure tiny changes in distance when spacetime warps from passing gravitational waves. But what if we could achieve similar sensitivity using quantum physics in a device that fits on your desk?

I've developed a novel approach to gravitational wave detection by leveraging quantum entanglement across relativistic reference frames. Instead of measuring physical distance changes, my detector encodes spacetime distortions directly into phase shifts between entangled qubits.

The breakthrough lies in the compositional pipeline architecture, where multiple quantum circuits with different entanglement topologies are connected in sequence. This design processes gravitational wave signals through specialized stages: linear configurations for initial encoding, fully-connected networks for transformation, and star topologies for final readout.

In experimental simulations using actual LIGO data, my three-stage pipelines demonstrated up to 1.85× improvement in detection sensitivity compared to single-stage detectors. The most effective configuration was a 4-qubit linear → 4-qubit full → 4-qubit linear pipeline, achieving a signal-to-noise ratio of 5.61.

What makes this approach revolutionary is that the detector's sensitivity doesn't depend on physical arm length. When two qubits are entangled, their quantum correlation becomes extraordinarily sensitive to relative changes in proper time. A passing gravitational wave creates tiny differences in how time flows at each qubit's location, producing measurable phase shifts that encode information about the wave.

My system leverages Quantum Fisher Information (QFI) as the key metric that quantifies detection sensitivity. By optimizing circuit designs and implementing error correction, I maximize the QFI and maintain quantum coherence despite environmental noise.

The current implementation runs on dual RTX 4070 GPUs with 128GB RAM using PennyLane for quantum circuit simulation. Benchmarking shows that single-stage detectors execute in 0.5-0.7 seconds, while full pipeline processing takes 1.5-3.0 seconds.

There remain challenges to overcome. The 8-qubit full topology occasionally exceeds memory limits, and some gravitational wave events require significant preprocessing. However, ZX-calculus optimization has improved circuit efficiency, and the error correction protocols maintain phase coherence throughout measurement.

The long-term vision includes creating networks of these tabletop detectors that could supplement existing observatories while potentially detecting signals in frequency ranges inaccessible to current technology. The compact size also makes deployment more flexible and less expensive.

Rather than replacing conventional interferometers, my quantum detector represents a complementary approach that exploits fundamentally different physics—the nonlocal correlations of entangled quantum states—to achieve sensitivity that would otherwise require massive infrastructure.

By bridging quantum information science and gravitational physics, this work demonstrates how quantum technology can transform our ability to study the universe's most extreme phenomena from the comfort of a laboratory bench.