This talk grew out of her earlier thesis on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, an important theorem on the power-frequency distribution of Brownian motion in different systems. The theorem represents a fundamental noise limitation on all measurements which she applies here to the analysis of a gravity wave interferometer. The talk spends about equal time on the theorem and its interesting history, and the application of this theorem to a system for gravity wave detection.

The talk is an enjoyable presentation of history, theory and application. The graphs and slides help a great deal, and it is clearly done. During the talk there were a number of questions from the audience which are distracting here, as we only hear her answers to them, but it's only a mild annoyance. I do wish that they had included the question and answer session at the end as well, but I'll take what I can get.

Both the audio and slides can be downloaded without having to stream the audio and pull up the slides during the talk, which will help people listening over a 56k modem or slower. The total size of the 35 slides is 4M, each ranging from 60k to 256k (slides 2 through 4 can be skipped).

Expected background for talk:
Fluency in graduate-level statistical mechanics. No background in gravity wave detection is needed.