Characterizing Light Scattering Sources in Gravitational-Wave Interferometers

Stray light in gravitational wave interferometers causes unwanted noise in the detections and can be generated due to the scattering of light on the optics and mechanical components of the instrument. This work focused on building a "scatterometer", an instrument that can measure the amount of scattering of light from different candidate materials used in Advanced Virgo and the future Einstein Telescope. The hardware was designed and analyses on the instrumental losses and background noise were performed. In addition, a literature review of different scattering models was done and those were compared with the measurements.