Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2014
Volume 59, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 5–8, 2014; Savannah, Georgia
Session M11: Invited Session: Progress Toward the Advanced Detector Era |
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Sponsoring Units: GGR Chair: Laura Cadonati, University of Massachusetts Amherst Room: Oglethorpe Auditorium |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 3:30PM - 4:06PM |
M11.00001: The Status of Advanced LIGO: Light at the End of the Tunnels! Invited Speaker: Jeffrey Kissel After six years of construction and installation, two of the Advanced LIGO gravitational wave detectors are on the cusp of completion. Early results from integrated testing show that these second-generation interferometers are well on their way to unprecedented strain sensitivity. It has a been a fantastic journey of single-goal-oriented teamwork, intense organization, and an exciting exercise of cutting edge physics and technology. We present this journey, demonstrating that all major subsystems have met the needed performance independently; we show the promising results from the early integrated testing phases of complete portions of the interferometers; and we finally discuss the schedule for commissioning the fully-operational interferometers to their designed performance. At such performance, we carve out new regions of strain sensitivity with these observatories, and begin to crack open the field of gravitational wave astrophysics. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 4:06PM - 4:42PM |
M11.00002: Preparing to analyze Advanced LIGO data: from detectors to first observations Invited Speaker: Jessica McIver Direct observation of gravitational waves (GWs) will open a new window to the Universe, directly probing the dynamics of high-energy astrophysical events. The US-based Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) detectors are now online, with the first observing runs commencing next year. The improved instrumentation pushes the frontiers of detector technology and increases the likelihood of GW observation over previous searches. This talk reviews ongoing efforts for testing instrumentation and software infrastructure in preparation for the search of GW transients in the advanced detector era. Particular emphasis will be placed on non-Gaussian noise artifacts and how new technologies and hardware are expected to improve the sensitivity of GW searches. I will outline current plans for the mitigation of predicted and undiscovered noise sources in the new Advanced LIGO instruments, and our progress toward readiness for rapid, confident gravitational wave detections. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, April 6, 2014 4:42PM - 5:18PM |
M11.00003: Multi-messenger Observations of Gravitational-Wave Sources in the Advanced Detectors Era Invited Speaker: Ruslan Vaulin In the near future the advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors will open a new direction in observational astronomy. Detection of gravitational waves will allow us to perform the first unambiguous observations of coalescence of compact binaries consisting of neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. The multi-messenger and multi-wavelength observations of such transient gravitational-wave events with other instruments will help us to identify their location, understand their environment and examine their hypothesized connection with the short gamma-ray bursts. They will also provide a wealth of complementary data from which we can infer new information about compact objects and various physical processes taking place during or after the coalescence. In addition to coalescing binaries, we should also be prepared to discover completely new classes of gravitational-wave transients, for which verification and understanding the multi-messenger observations at other wavelengths would be equally important. In this talk I will give an overview of the observing plans for the advanced detectors in the second half of this decade, and their projected capabilities in discovering and localizing the transient gravitational-wave sources. I will describe the main challenges in performing the multi-messenger observations of such sources and what we do to overcome them in preparation for future observational campaigns. I will conclude by presenting the initiative led by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations to involve a wider astronomical community in the follow-up multi-messenger observations starting with the very first advanced detectors science run in 2015. [Preview Abstract] |
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