Squeezed Light Experiment a Glowing Success!

Research on the use of "squeezed light" in a complete LIGO detector has been underway on the enhanced LIGO 4km interferometer at Hanford (H1) . Recently, the squeezed light team has successfully demonstrated a nearly 1dBでしべる improvement over a broad range of frequencies. Equally important for future applications is the fact that the influence of optical backscatter, which dominates at low frequencies, has been well understood.

The team believes it now knows enough to responsibly design a potential future upgrade to Advanced LIGO which would use squeezing to improve the design's sensitivity. This is a true milestone and a wonderful example of forward-looking R&D; that also acts to reduce risk for Advanced LIGO.

A further refinement of the H1 squeezed interferometer is underway: the installation of a low-loss output mode cleaner. Its objective is to achieve a greater reduction in noise and to provide further data on backscatter. This work will be pursued as a target of opportunity in the remaining available time, but the squeezing team can already claim success in its original goals.

The Advanced LIGO team has been working carefully around the H1 interferometer as it installs the new system. With the squeezing goals met, we can plan the decommissioning of H1 in preparation for the Advanced LIGO components. Our schedule calls for this to begin November 30, 2011, or shortly thereafter. That will mark the definitive end of the squeezing R&D; on the Hanford 4km interferometer.

- Contributed by Dave Reitze

David Reitze Named New LIGO Executive Director

David Reitze has been named the new LIGO Executive Director, succeeding Jay Marx, who is retiring as Director but will continue to work with LIGO part-time.

Reitze, a professor of physics at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration for the past four years, has been involved with LIGO since 1996, most recently leading the input optics design for Advanced LIGO. In addition to his role as LIGO Executive Director, Reitze was named a senior research associate at Caltech.

Read the full Caltech press release here:
http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13446

Gabriela Gonzalez Elected as New Spokesperson of the LSC

Gabriela Gonzalez has been elected as the new spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). Gonzalez, a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, was elected to the position for a two-year term. She is a Fellow of the International Society on General Relativity & Gravitation; the American Physical Society (APS); and the Institute of Physics.

Read the official LSU press release:
http://www.lsu.edu/ur/ocur/lsunews/MediaCenter/News/2011/04/item28979.html

Real or Counterfeit - the tale of the Big Dog

For a few months here at LIGO, there has been a lot of hushed but excited talk that a gravitational-wave detection event may have been observed during the Sixth Science Run underway last September. The discussions were discreet, unofficial, and always qualified as "may have been observed." It is the essence of the scientific method not to announce any conclusion until results have been checked, rechecked, and checked again. Nevertheless, the excitement was conspicuous and the code words "big dog" could be heard in every hallway, around every coffee pot. Why "big dog"? The possible event appeared to originate in the area of the Canis Major constellation.

At the same time, LIGO scientists and engineers were always aware that a fake signal - a "blind injection" - might be deliberately added to the data by top management to test the data analysis methods and the personnel monitoring the science run. So the signal might be spurious. Or it might be authentic. All of LIGO was enjoined to act on the assumption that the event was as real as it appeared to be.

After months of preparation, planning, research and due diligence, it was announced that the answer to the Big Dog event - was it real or fake? - would be disclosed at the March LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) in California. The procedure would be this: Jay Marx, LIGO Executive Director, would stand before the hundreds of LSC collaborators gathered in the vast assembly hall of the Embassy Suites Hotel. Video cameras would simultaneously broadcast his actions to LSC outposts around the world via the internet. Marx would exhibit a sealed envelope, open it, and reveal its contents. If the envelope contained a slip of paper, then the Big Dog event was a fake, only a test. But if the envelope were empty, then the event was real and all pandemonium could be expected to break out.

After about two hours into the first day of the LSC meeting, Jay Marx took his position at center stage in front of the assembly. He displayed the envelope. He opened it. A tense hush fell over the crowd. He revealed the answer.

So was the Big Dog an authentic gravitational-wave detection event? Or was it instead a test? (Hint: when the event is real, expect this blog to proclaim it in 10-inch high letters.)

Read more here:

Discover Magazine Online
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/03/15/ligo-to-collaboration-members-there-is-no-santa-claus/

Discovery News Online
http://news.discovery.com/space/ligos-little-black-box-110317.html

LivingLigo.Org
http://stuver.blogspot.com/2011/03/big-dog-in-envelope.html

The full story at the official LIGO website, LIGO.ORG
http://www.ligo.org/news/blind-injection.php

Reaching Still Higher by Going Down Under: the LIGO-Australia Concept

LIGO scientists have recently unveiled an ambitious plan to enlarge the scope and power of the laboratory's detectors. Currently the three LIGO interferometers are all situated within the contiguous United States - two in Hanford, Washington, and one in Livingston, Louisiana. Separated by nearly 2000 miles, the distance between them helps to pinpoint the sky position of those events the interferometers detect, and to act as a mutual cross-check to rule out inauthentic signals. If the Louisiana detector suddenly sounds the alert that a gravitational-wave signal has been received, while the Hanford detectors remain calm and quiet, odds are it is a false positive at the southern site, perhaps the faint vibrations of a tree felled by loggers in the nearby forests.

But what if one of our three detectors were located much farther from the other two, LIGO scientists speculated? What if it were located on a different continent? Already the LIGO interferometers operate in sync with the three-kilometer Virgo detector, placed in Cascina, Italy, and the 600-meter GEO detector near Hannover, Germany. How much greater would the scientific yields be if another detector were installed even more remotely on the globe, somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, for instance - somewhere in Australia, to be precise.

In October LIGO's Sixth Science Run, which has been underway for over a year, is scheduled to come to an end. The initial interferometers will be removed and the massive work of installing the Advanced LIGO equipment will commence. The complete rebuild is expected to take about four years. If a scheme to transfer one of the Advanced LIGO detectors to the Southern Hemisphere is to be realized, now is the time for the decision to be made. Now is the time for a bold initiative. Now is the time for LIGO-Australia.

Everyone sees the benefits. For gravitational-wave astronomy to be most effective, a global array of detectors widely separated by continental distances is essential. It would ensure optimum source localization on the sky and enable multi-messenger astronomy using gravitational-wave signals. An expanded array that includes LIGO-Australia would provide much improved sky localization and detection confidence, stronger duty cycle and flexibility, with greater ability to extract the full astrophysical information inherent in the waves. Far distant from the present LIGO, Virgo and GEO Observatories, Australia is ideally located to be this vital new outpost in the advanced detector array.

The idea is daunting; no one knows this more than those most committed to its success. Over the summer discussions have been vigorous between the LIGO Laboratory and the Australian Consortium for Gravitational Astronomy (ACIGA). The agreed-upon plan calls for LIGO to direct the components of a complete advanced interferometer to Australia. Our colleagues down under would be required to provide all the infrastructure necessary to house and operate the machine, including furnishing a suitable site, roads, buildings, facilities, the vacuum apparatus, and all the personnel needed to install and commission the detector.

But technical challenges are not the obstacle. Cost is. To seize this opportunity, Australia would have to fund all requisite construction expenses, as well as commit to providing operations costs for a minimum 10-year term. Current projections indicate about $125M needed to build the infrastructure, and another $45M to run and maintain the facility for a decade. So as an estimated $170M endeavor, this is not an inexpensive proposition. But for the hundreds of LIGO scientists worldwide who see LIGO-Australia as the inevitable next step in building a necessary global array, the expected profits for astrophysics are worth every penny.

Pictured at right above, the Australian International Gravitational Observatory (AIGO) research facility, operated by ACIGA near Gingin in Western Australia, is the proposed site of the LIGO-Australia interferometer.

Will the plan go through? Insiders say that even 50-50 odds are optimistic. But an important go-ahead was gained last month when the National Science Foundation (NSF), LIGO's funding agency, greenlighted the plan and endorsed the scientific rationale driving it. Many obstacles remain. The NSF's approval is contingent on the understanding that relocating one of the next-generation interferometers to Australia will not add to the LIGO budget. Thus, much depends now on the ability of gravitational-wave scientists to convince Australian politicians of the benefits of this new observatory, and of politicians to convince Australian taxpayers of the benefits to science and humankind.

Science Magazine recently published a succinct overview of the LIGO-Australia proposal. Read it here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;329/5995/1003.

LIGO Scientist Nergis Mavalvala Named 2010 MacArthur Fellow

MIT Physics Professor and LIGO Scientific Collaboration member Nergis Mavalvala has been named one of 23 MacArthur Fellows for 2010 by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Fellowships, nicknamed the "Genius Awards," provide $500,000 of "no strings attached" support over five years and are awarded "to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work." Professor Mavalvala's research on macroscopic quantum systems at MIT has the potential to stretch the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors. Members of her MIT team and others in LIGO will transform Hanford's four-kilometer interferometer (H1) detector into a squeezed-light interferometer in 2011, prior to H1's conversion in Advanced LIGO. The H1 squeezed light experiment represents an important marker on the path to treating kilogram-scale masses as quantum objects.

Find out more about Professor Mavalvala's research into gravitational waves here, and read this New Scientist Q&A; with her, in which she describes her reaction on learning she had received the fellowship, and her plans for using the award money to further her research.

See also the full list of 2010 MacArthur Fellows to view the remarkable variety of interests and disciplines represented among this year's recipients.

LIGO in LaserFest

LaserFest is the 2010 worldwide commemoration of the 50-year anniversary of the laser. LIGO invites physics classrooms across the U.S. to subscribe to a 50-minute video program, offered at three different times on November 15th, that will provide an up-close look at LIGO's use of laser technology. LIGO scientists at MIT, Caltech, and the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston Observatories will demonstrate cutting-edge laser systems in a broadcast over the internet using EVO, the worldwide collaboration network. A live Q&A; session will conclude each broadcast. Teachers who cannot utilize the live broadcasts can show the fully recorded version in their classrooms using EVO between November 16th and November 19th. How can schools participate? Find all the details at the LIGO in LaserFest website.