The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is an NSF-funded project to detect gravitational waves. This award supports the design, development, construction, commissioning and operation of a large computing cluster to search the LIGO data stream for weak signals from astrophysical sources and instrumental anomalies. The cluster will be used both by scientists at the University of Wisconsin / Milwaukee and by outside members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). Using commodity parts in a simple distributed architecture, the cluster is designed to achieve extremely high performance at reasonable cost. It will also yield very high bandwidth to the LIGO data set, so that months or years of data can be quickly searched for signals.
Since the astrophysical signals that LIGO might detect are extremely weak, they must be extracted from the detector noise using specialized data analysis algorithms and techniques. This cluster will permit deeper and more intensive searches for a wider variety of signals, and may enable to the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves. The computing cluster will be available to all members of the LSC, including undergraduate and graduate students. The LSC includes many students and faculty members from underrepresented groups and minority-serving institutions.
