This award supports the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) site at the California Institute of Technology. The site is associated with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project at Caltech. LIGO provides a unique and exciting opportunity for undergraduate students to participate in the opening of an entirely new observational window on the Universe. REU participants work closely with individual LIGO scientists on summer research projects involving many aspects of detector hardware development, data analysis, and source modeling. The RET component of this proposal involves high school teachers that are local to the LIGO sites in rural Washington and Louisiana. RET participants take part in research projects alongside the REU students at the sites, and they also work on creating classroom activities that bring the foundations of LIGO science to their own students. Students and teachers work with professional scientists from around the globe, at all stages in their careers, and learn first-hand how large projects are organized and operate. They also acquire new skills that are applicable in a broad range of technical careers, as they work on projects involving optics, lasers, electronics, servo controls, mechanical systems, data analysis, and software development, with an ever-present focus on pushing engineering systems to calculated physical noise limits.
The LIGO Laboratory, operated by Caltech and MIT with support from the NSF, aims to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from astrophysical and cosmological sources, study the properties of those waves as a test of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and use the waves to study the properties of the sources. GWs are produced by some of the most energetic and interesting phenomena in the universe, where gravity is very strong and rapidly changing: neutron stars, black holes, the Big Bang. LIGO observations will open a new and rich field of astrophysics. Our detectors push the limits of funtamental metrology, and are amongst measuring devices ever built. More about the science can be found here: www.ligo.org/science.php As an REU Site, our goals are to provide students with an in-depth experience doing cutting-edge research in gravitational-wave physics and astrophysics. Topics studied by the REU participants include: gravitational-wave detection technologies, precision optical metrology, and high-performance feedback and control; gravitational-wave detector astrophysical search algorithms and pipelines; estimating the sky location and parameters of astrophysical sources; modeling gravitational-wave sources such as compact binary mergers, core-collapse supernovae, rapidly spinning neutron stars and pulsars; and stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds. Our site also introduces students to big science involving multiple institutions over many years, techniques in high performance computing, high performance digital control systems, laboratory and laser safety, and scientific communication. The LIGO Laboratory NSF REU Program (8-10 students each summer) is embedded within a larger LIGO Lab Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program (25-35 students each summer), which is itself embedded in a much larger Caltech SURF Program (hundreds of students). Our REU students benefit greatly from interactions, opportunities and activities of these larger programs. All REU students pursue research in a cutting-edge topic in gravitational wave instrumentation, physics, and astrophysics. Working closely with their mentor, they prepare a research proposal prior to arrival. They attend numerous lectures, tutorials, seminars, and hands-on workshops throughout the summer. They perform their research during the 10 weeks of the summer program, under the supervision of their mentors and in collaboration with peers. During the summer, they visit the LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) in Louisiana, where they tour the facilities, including our outstanding Science Education Center. At the end of the summer, they present their research and results to all participants (other students, mentors, and interested members of the Laboratory) in a 15-minute talk. They write up a final research report, aiming for the standards of a scientific publication. All final papers are publicly available (https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-P1400235/public). In many cases, their work is or will be represented in scientific publication(s). Often, students present their results to their professors and peers at their home institutions. Many present talks or posters at Undergraduate Research Conferences, and occasionally at high-profile professional conferences such as APS and AAS meetings. Every REU participant develops a working knowledge of gravitational-wave physics and astrophysics at the graduate level. Depending on their project, participants develop scientific and technical expertise in: advanced laboratory techniques in precision optical metrology; high-performance control systems; high-performance and high throughput computing; transient optical astronomy; complex data analysis, statistical inference, signal processing, big-data mining and visualization, machine learning, and scientific computating; the astrophysics of compact stars and black holes, core-collapse supernovae, and cosmology; analytical and numerical relativity. Each student has a unique scientific research objective, of direct relevance to the gravitational-wave science research program of the LIGO Laboratory. The specific topics pursued by the ten REU participants in summer 2014 were: Time Delay Of Gravitational Waves Propagating Through a Galaxy Toward a Non-Stationary Observer Improvement of Fiber Optic Based Optical Levers By Elimination of Higher Order Cladding Modes Extracting the Star formation Rate from the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background Transportation of Ultra-Stable Light via Optical Fiber Improving the Detection Rate of Gravitational Waves from Coalescing Binary Black Holes with Precessing Spins in LIGO/Virgo Data Inference on Binary Neutron Star Mass Distribution from GW Observations An Optical Setup for Crackle Noise Detection Orthogonal Sensor and Actuator, and Automatic Alignment of High Finesse Optical Ring Cavity Numerical Simulations of Superkick Binary Black Holes Dynamics and Electromagnetic Wave Signatures of Magnetized Neutron Stars near Black Holes Along with the advancement of gravitational-wave science, a primary goal of our Program is to train and inspire undergraduates to pursue careers in physics, astronomy, engineering, high-performance computing, statistical data analysis and inference, or related technical fields. Based on years of observation of students in the program, testimonials, and other evidence, every student gains an enormous amount of knowledge, experience and technical skills during the program. Most will pursue graduate-level research in physics, astronomy, engineering or related technical fields. We believe that the impact of our Program on our REU participants in science, technology and engineering is extremely high.
