Dr Johannes Eichholz

Dr Johannes Eichholz

School of Physics and Astronomy
Assistant Professor

Contact details

Address
Physics West
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Dr Eichholz is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy in the School of Physics and Astronomy. He works on developing technologies for gravitational wave detectors and instrumentation for precision metrology, with a focus on optical coating deposition.

Qualifications

  • PhD Physics, University of Florida (2015)
  • Physik Diplom (MSc Physics), Leibniz Universität Hannover / Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (2009)

Biography

Dr Eichholz received his Physik Diplom (MSc Physics) from the Leibniz Universität Hannover for work undertaken at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in 2009, on the experimental demonstration of weak light optical ranging for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL in 2015 for pioneering laser frequency stabilisation methods for space interferometry, with a brief period spent at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, in combination with building a cryogenic coating thermal noise testbed for ground-based gravitational wave observatories. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the California Institute of Technology and member of the in the LIGO Laboratory in Pasadena, CA from 2016 to 2018, and then a Research Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra from 2018 to 2025. Since October 2025 he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Birmingham.

Dr Eichholz works on optical coating deposition and characterisation for precision interferometric metrology and gravitational wave detection, thermal noise measurement, optomechanical systems, and cryogenic interferometry.

Teaching

  • Y2 Physics Laboratory

Postgraduate supervision

Topics

  • Gravitational Wave Instrumentation
  • Precision Interferometric Metrology
  • Optical Coating Development
  • Ultrafast Pulsed Laser Ablation
  • (Quantum-) Opto-Mechanics

Research

  • Gravitational Wave Instrumentation
    • LIGO Technology Development
    • Cosmic Explorer + Einstein Telescope Feasibility Studies
  • Thin-Film Coatings
    • Single- and multi-layer thin films deposition
    • Ultrafast pulsed laser ablation and deposition
    • coating characterisation
  • Cryogenic Interferometry
    • material studies at cryogenic temperatures
    • noise and optical trapping
  • Precision Metrology
    • development and stabilisation
    • techniques and thin film growth monitoring
    • optical sensing systems

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Kapasi, DP, McRae, TG, Eichholz, J, Altin, PA, McClelland, DE & Slagmolen, BJJ 2025, 'Low-vibration cryogenic test facility for next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave observatories', Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 96, no. 1, 014504. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0236965

Kapasi, DP, Nguyen, TT-H, Ward, RL, Eichholz, J, Iqbal, MH, McRae, TG, Altin, PA, McClelland, DE & Slagmolen, BJJ 2023, 'Direct observation of the thermal noise spectrum of a silicon flexure membrane', Applied Physics Letters, vol. 122, no. 2, 022202. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0131984

Drori, Y, Eichholz, J, Edo, T, Yamamoto, H, Enomoto, Y, Venugopalan, G, Arai, K & Adhikari, RX 2022, 'Scattering loss in precision metrology due to mirror roughness', Journal of the Optical Society of America A: Optics and Image Science, and Vision, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 969-978. https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.455127

Ackley, K, Adya, VB, Agrawal, P, Altin, P, Ashton, G, Bailes, M, Baltinas, E, Barbuio, A, Beniwal, D, Blair, C, Blair, D, Bolingbroke, GN, Bossilkov, V, Shachar Boublil, S, Brown, DD, Burridge, BJ, Calderon Bustillo, J, Cameron, J, Tuong Cao, H, Carlin, JB, Chang, S, Charlton, P, Chatterjee, C, Chattopadhyay, D, Chen, X, Chi, J, Chow, J, Chu, Q, Ciobanu, A, Clarke, T, Clearwater, P, Cooke, J, Coward, D, Crisp, H, Dattatri, RJ, Deller, AT, Dobie, DA, Dunn, L, Easter, PJ, Eichholz, J, Evans, R, Flynn, C, Foran, G, Forsyth, P, Gai, Y, Galaudage, S, Galloway, DK, Gendre, B, Goncharov, B, Goode, S, Gozzard, D, Grace, B, Graham, AW, Heger, A, Hernandez Vivanco, F, Hirai, R, Holland, NA, Holmes, ZJ, Howard, E, Howell, E, Howitt, G, Hübner, MT, Hurley, J, Ingram, C, Jaberian Hamedan, V, Jenner, K, Ju, L, Kapasi, DP, Kaur, T, Kijbunchoo, N, Kovalam, M, Kumar Choudhary, R, Lasky, PD, Lau, MYM, Leung, J, Liu, J, Loh, K, Mailvagan, A, Mandel, I, Mccann, JJ, Mcclelland, DE, Mckenzie, K, Mcmanus, D, Mcrae, T, Melatos, A, Meyers, P, Middleton, H, Miles, MT, Millhouse, M, Lun Mong, Y, Mueller, B, Munch, J, Musiov, J, Muusse, S, Nathan, RS, Naveh, Y, Neijssel, C, Neil, B, Ng, SWS, Oloworaran, V, Ottaway, DJ, Page, M, Pan, J, Pathak, M, Payne, E, Powell, J, Pritchard, J, Puckridge, E, Raidani, A, Rallabhandi, V, Reardon, D, Riley, JA, Roberts, L, Romero-Shaw, IM, Roocke, TJ, Rowell, G, Sahu, N, Sarin, N, Sarre, L, Sattari, H, Schiworski, M, Scott, SM, Sengar, R, Shaddock, D, Shannon, R, Shi, J, Sibley, P, Slagmolen, BJJ, Slaven-Blair, T, Spollard, J, Steed, L, Strang, L, Sun, H, Sunderland, A, Suvorova, S, Talbot, C, Thrane, E, Töyrä, D, Trahanas, P, Vajpeyi, A, Van Heijningen, JV, Vargas, AF, Veitch, PJ, Vigna-Gomez, A, Wade, A, Walker, K, Wang, Z, Ward, RL, Ward, K, Webb, S, Wen, L, Wette, K, Wilcox, R, Winterflood, J, Wolf, C, Wu, B, Jet Yap, M, You, Z, Yu, H, Zhang, J, Zhang, J, Zhao, C & Zhu, X 2020, 'Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network', Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, vol. 37, e047. https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2020.39

Eichholz, J, Holland, NA, Adya, VB, Van Heijningen, JV, Ward, RL, Slagmolen, BJJ, McClelland, DE & Ottaway, DJ 2020, 'Practical test mass and suspension configuration for a cryogenic kilohertz gravitational wave detector', Physical Review D, vol. 102, no. 12, 122003. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.102.122003

Kapasi, DP, Eichholz, J, McRae, T, Ward, RL, Slagmolen, BJJ, Legge, S, Hardman, KS, Altin, PA & McClelland, DE 2020, 'Tunable narrow-linewidth laser at 2 µm wavelength for gravitational wave detector research', Optics Express, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 3280-3288. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.383685

View all publications in research portal