Saulson's research group at Syracuse has been working for two decades to help develop the LIGO gravitational wave detector and to contribute to the search for gravitational waves with the observations that it has made. In the coming three years, the group will develop a new technique to uncover the causes of excess (non-Gaussian) disturbances, or 'glitches',in LIGO's data. They will develop a data-mining system to look for the connection between times subject to disturbances and the values of a wide array of control and monitoring signals. This will allow the exploration of the possibility that saturation of error signals in control systems causes extra sensitivity to environmental disturbances, as well as other mechanisms that can cause time-varying couplings between control channels and the gravitational wave output. Success in this project will allow more confident detections of gravitational wave signals, and will ease the path to future sharing of LIGO data with the public. The Syracuse group will also work to improve Advanced LIGO's search for gravitational waves from the coalescence of a neutron star binary. A specially-focused pipeline will be developed to take full advantage of all of the special features of this signal. This will improve Advanced LIGO's ability to detect signals from this key science target.
When we have succeeded in detecting gravitational waves, we will be able to explore the universe in a completely new way. It will enable us to make unprecedented observations of black holes, and in particular to check whether they behave as predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Development of gravitational wave detection techniques has led to advances in U.S. technological capability in lasers, vacuum systems, and precision mechanics, among others. Saulson's group at Syracuse is engaged in formal and informal education at many levels, including undergraduate and graduate training and outreach to the general public. The group also participates in research on the sociology of science, in conjunction with Prof. Harry Collins of Cardiff University.
