Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2007 Joint Spring Meeting of the Texas Sections of APS, AAPT, and SPS
Volume 52, Number 2
Thursday–Saturday, March 22–24, 2007; Abilene, Texas
Session PL1: Plenary I - History and Gravitation |
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Chair: Michael Sadler, Abilene Christian University Room: CBS Hart Auditorium |
Friday, March 23, 2007 8:50AM - 9:20AM |
PL1.00001: The Role of the Texas AAPT Section in the Formation of the Texas APS Section Invited Speaker: Twenty-five years ago, at the Fall Meeting of TSAAPT on the TCU campus, some 20 attendees who were members of both AAPT and APS signed a petition addressed to the Council of the American Physical Society requesting that a Texas Section of APS be created. The leaders of the movement declared their belief that holding joint meetings of the Sections would further the interests of both the physics teaching and research communities in Texas. I will describe the conditions which led up to the petition, the hard work by Leonard M. Diana and others that culminated in approval of the Section by Council, and the early days of the new relationship. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 23, 2007 9:20AM - 10:00AM |
PL1.00002: Search for Gravitational Waves with the LIGO Interferometers Invited Speaker: The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) project is designed to measure the infinitesimal perturbations of the curvature of spacetime due to the motion of astronomical bodies. The experiment consists of three interferometers with Fabry-Perot cavity arms for increased effective arm length, sensitive to strains of $h \quad \sim $ 10$^{-21}$ from 40 Hz to 1 kHz. Sources of astronomical interest in this frequency range include binary inspirals of neutron stars or black holes, ``burst'' sources such as supernovae, periodic signals from pulsars, and stochastic sources. In order to measure such small strains, great care must be invested in seismic isolation of the optics, suppression of thermal noise and thermal lensing effects, high-powered laser stabilization, optical configuration, and other issues. The LIGO interferometers reached design sensitivity in 2005, and a science run to collect one year of triple-coincidence data is currently in progress. This talk will cover the status of that run, science results to date, and continued efforts to improve the strain sensitivity in this and future iterations of the LIGO detectors. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 23, 2007 10:00AM - 10:30AM |
PL1.00003: LISA: Detecting gravitational waves from space Invited Speaker: The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a proposed joint NASA-ESA mission whose goal is to detect low frequency (1e-4 Hz to 1e-1 Hz) gravitational waves. Expected sources include binary stars in our galaxy, extra-galactic massive black holes, and possibly gravitational radiation left over from the big bang. In this talk, I will briefly describe the LISA mission and the science that LISA will be able to do with its observations. [Preview Abstract] |
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