By observing gravitational radiation from a binary black hole merger, the LIGO collaboration has simultaneously opened a new window on the universe and achieved the first direct detection of gravitational waves. Here this discovery is analyzed using concepts from introductory physics.Drawing upon Newtonian mechanics, dimensional considerations, and analogies between gravitational and electromagnetic waves, we are able to explain the principal features of LIGO's data and make order of magnitude estimates of key parameters of the event by inspection of the data. Our estimates of the black hole masses, the distance to the event, the initial separation of the pair, and the stupendous total amount of energy radiated are all in good agreement with the best fit values of these parameters obtained by the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration.

Vacuum radiation has been the subject of theoretical study in both cosmology and condensed matter physics for many decades. Recently there has been impressive progress in experimental realizations as well. Here we study vacuum radiation when a field mode is driven both parametrically and by a classical source. We find that in the Heisenberg picture the field operators of the mode undergo a Bogolyubov transformation combined with a displacement; in the Schrödinger picture the oscillator evolves from the vacuum to a squeezed coherent state. Whereas the Bogolyubov transformation is the same as would be obtained if only the parametric drive were applied the displacement is determined by both the parametric drive and the force. If the force is applied well after the parametric drive then the displacement is the same as would be obtained by the action of the force alone and it is essentially independent of t f , the time lag between the application of the force and the parametric drive. If the force is applied well before the parametric drive the displacement is found to oscillate as a function of t f . This behavior can be understood in terms of quantum interference. A rich variety of behavior is observed for intermediate values of t f . The oscillations can turn off smoothly or grow dramatically and decrease depending on strength of the parametric drive and force and the durations for which they are applied. The displacement depends only on the Fourier component of the force at a single resonant fre-

Recent work has shown that entanglement and the structure of spacetime are intimately related. One way to investigate this is to begin with an entanglement entropy in a conformal field theory (CFT) and use the AdS/CFT correspondence to calculate the bulk metric. We perform this calculation for ABJM, a particular 3-dimensional supersymmetric CFT (SCFT), in its ground state. In particular we are able to reconstruct the pure AdS 4 metric from the holographic entanglement entropy of the boundary ABJM theory in its ground state. Moreover, we are able to predict the correct AdS radius purely from entanglement. We also address the general philosophy of relating entanglement and spacetime through the Holographic Principle, as well as some of the philosophy behind our calculations.

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