Bulletin of the American Physical Society
83rd Annual Meeting of the APS Southeastern Section
Volume 61, Number 19
Thursday–Saturday, November 10–12, 2016; Charlottesville, Virginia
Session L1: LIGO and other Gravity Experiments |
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Chair: Joe Giaime, Louisiana State University Room: West Ballroom |
Saturday, November 12, 2016 8:30AM - 9:00AM |
L1.00001: The Advanced LIGO Instrument, Its First Science Run and Gravitational Wave Detections Invited Speaker: Anamaria Effler The Advanced LIGO upgrade of the two LIGO detectors in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA was completed in 2014. All subsystems were redesigned for improved performance at all relevant frequencies, aiming for an overall factor of 10 improvement of sensitivity from initial LIGO. The first science run, from September 2015 to January 2016, has already yielded two gravitational wave signal detections from coalescing binary black holes, creating in turn a wave of excitement around the world. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, November 12, 2016 9:00AM - 9:30AM |
L1.00002: Results from the first Advanced LIGO observing run and their astrophysical implications Invited Speaker: Tyson Littenberg The discovery of merging black holes during Advanced LIGO's first observing run (O1) signaled the culmination of a decades-long quest to detect gravitational waves and the beginning of a new observational field of astrophysics. This talk will summarize our new understanding of the gravitational-wave sky, placing results from the O1 observing campaign in context with other astrophysical observations and predictions, before closing with forecasts for the exciting future of ground-based gravitational wave observations. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, November 12, 2016 9:30AM - 10:00AM |
L1.00003: The State of Gravitational Wave Detection with Pulsar Timing Arrays Invited Speaker: Scott Ransom The use of ensembles of well-timed millisecond pulsars (meaning pulse arrival times are measured with precisions better than 1 microsec) to directly detect nanohertz frequency gravitational waves (GWs) has reached a very important milestone. Our current sensitivities are constraining models of the mergers of super-massive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) throughout the universe. Each of the three main pulsar timing arrays (PTAs; NANOGrav in North America, EPTA in Europe, and the PPTA using the Parkes telescope in Australia) has comparable sensitivity, and over the coming few years, their joint efforts as part of the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA), should definitively detect GWs from SMBHBs, or very strongly constrain theories of galaxy and black hole mergers throughout cosmic time. Additionally, by measuring these systems to such high-precision, many "secondary" science products result for "free", such as new neutron star masses which can constrain the high-density matter equation of state, and new tests of general relativity which cannot be achieved here in the solar system. The next few years of millisecond pulsar astronomy should be very exciting. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, November 12, 2016 10:00AM - 10:30AM |
L1.00004: The LISA Pathfinder: Results and Implications for LISA Invited Speaker: Jacob Slutsky The LISA Pathfinder (LPF) is a technology demonstration space mission for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a proposed future space-based observatory for gravitational waves in the milli-Hertz band. Launched in December of 2015, and beginning operations this past March, LPF has already published exceptional preliminary results, fully proving the sensitivity of the gravitational reference measurement technology required for a gravitational-wave space observatory. The LPF mission placed two test masses into drag-free flight and measured the relative acceleration between them to a few a femto-meters per second per second in the sensitive frequency band, over measurement periods of days to weeks, validating a number of critical technologies for any LISA-like gravitational wave observatory. These technologies include the sensing and control of the test masses, drag-free control laws, microNewton thrusters, and picometer-level laser metrology. The LPF mission was led and built by ESA and European member institutions, with NASA contributions. Although the formal partnership between NASA and ESA to pursue LISA was dissolved in 2011, ESA has selected the Gravitational Universe theme for its third Large-class mission (L3), to be fulfilled by a space-borne gravitational wave observatory, and NASA has expressed interest in participating. Any such mission will take advantage of the significant technology achievements already made by LPF. This talk presents preliminary results, current status, and future plans for the LISA Pathfinder mission. [Preview Abstract] |
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