The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) consists of 4 km baseline detectors in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, and an additional 2 km detector in Hanford. LIGO's operating principle is to use precision laser interferometry to measure the relative motion of seismically-isolated test mass mirrors due to the extremely small forces from gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by distant astrophysical events. Louisiana State University (LSU) is located approximately 40 km from LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) and has a long-term collaborative relationship with LIGO as a member of the LIGO Scientic Collaboration. The LSU group is heavily involved in the Detector Characterization group, the Calibration Committee, and the groups searching for gravitational waves from Coalescing Binary Compact systems, and for waveform-independent searches for Burst signals. In a broad context, the funded activities involve LSU faculty, postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates at LIGO, bringing LSU people the benefits of working with experienced LIGO and LIGO Scientic Collaboration (LSC) scientists, and with apparatus that allows an excellent possibility of signicant scientic discovery. LSU shares its libraries, networking facilities, and workshops. LIGO personnel participate in the LSU Physics and Astronomy departments' colloquia and astrophysics discussion groups, and often work directly with students. This impact on LLO, a close and extensive relationship with a nearby research university, is expected to be strengthened with continued collaboration.
Specifically, this award provides funds to(1) Characterize LIGO data to be taken in 2009-2010 with Enhanced Detectors (S6 science run), monitoring the noise characteristics and short transients; (2) Continue contributions to the detector calibration team for the calibration of data in S6 with Enhanced LIGO, developing methods to improve the precision of the calibration and the monitoring of systems changes in time that affect calibration; (3) Search the LIGO data to be taken in S6 for inspiraling compact objects, and for unmodeled burst sources; (4) Contribute to reducing the technological risk in the Advanced LIGO upgrade by participating in the commissioning, and performance studies of optical readout and seismic isolation systems in Enhanced LIGO.
This award supported the group at Louisiana University in 2009-2014, dedicated to the search of gravitational waves with LIGO detectors. Gravitational waves are ``ripples in space time" that are produced by violent astrophysical events like the birth of a black hole when two neutron stars collide and travel away at the speed of light carrying energy and information about the source. The LIGO detectors are exquisite precision instruments that can detect those distortions of space time on Earth, receiving the cosmic messages from the Universe. LIGO uses interferometry with laser beams to measure the changes in distance between masses suspended in vacuum, more than 2 miles apart - it can measure distortions of space smaller than a part in a thousand of a proton size! Intellectual merit of the LSU LIGO research The research of the LSU group members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC, www.ligo.org) contributed to several dozens of publications by the LSC in the award period, as well as many articles by LSU scientists and other collaborators. LSU contributed to the improvement in sensitivity of the LIGO detector at Livingston, LA, in the active seismic isolation and signal readout technology used in the "Enhanced LIGO detector" that started taking data in 2010. We contributed to the calibration and characterization of the data taken with LIGO in 2005-2010, to make sure the analysis of the data allows conclusions in astrophysical events which are robust against "false alarms" produced by instrumental artifacts. With other members of the LSC, we searched the LIGO data for gravitational waves produced by the "ringdown" of a black hole after its birth - we didn't find any gravitational waves, but this led us to important conclusions on how rare these astrophysical events are in our local Universe. Broader Impact of the LSU LIGO research This award contributed significantly to the production of human resources in the science and technology fields in the US: five LSU graduate students received their PhD for the research done under this award, and four postdocs obtained professional training for their research; all of them leaving LSU successfully employed in different positions in research, education, laboratories and industry. The group contributed to the excitement about science in the general public by giving many public talks on gravitational wave science, participating monthly in LSU Science Saturdays for high school students, helping in the LIGO Science Saturdays at the LIGO Science Education Center in Livingston, LA, and serving in local science fairs and other school events.
