LIGO Detector Characterization and Supernova Data Analysis

LIGO and its sibling collaborations continue to push forward the young field of gravitational wave astronomy. This grant focuses on Embry-Riddle's contributions to two facets of LIGO science. The first is detector characterization, which involves efforts to understand and mitigate the effects of Earth-based noise on the interferometer in order to detect gravitational waves with better clarity.

The second is the search for gravitational waves from core-collapse supernovae, a promising source of gravitational wave emission beyond binary coalescences. Embry-Riddle is well positioned to advance the training of the next generation of scientists due to its focus on undergraduate education with close faculty-student interaction. Embry-Riddle's location, serving rural north-central Arizona, helps attract first-generation college students.

Given its proximity to the Navajo nation, Embry-Riddle is also in a position to increase access to scientific opportunities for underrepresented minorities.

The search for gravitational waves is made more difficult by the presence of terrestrial background, resulting from a combination of environmental disturbances and behavior of the interferometers themselves. Understanding these disturbances and removing them from interferometric data through detector characterization activities is critical in conducting sensitive searches for gravitational waves, as it can mean the difference between a statistically significant gravitational wave detection and a sub-threshold event.

The PI of this proposal is a co-chair of LIGO's detector characterization working group, and will conduct a number of activities related to the continued operation of that group. Core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) are an exciting target for multi-messenger astronomy. Given the rate of about two CCSNe per century in our galaxy, the signatures of the next Galactic CCSN are already traveling toward us.

The reconstruction of a gravitational wave from a CCSN would address a number of open questions in astrophysics, including the mechanism of the explosion itself as well as fundamental questions about neutrino interactions and the neutron star equation of state. In the next few years, the improved sensitivity of Advanced LIGO combined with more sophisticated algorithms for detection and parameter estimation of supernova signals will greatly enhance LIGO's opportunities for exploring supernova astrophysics, and future interferometers carry even more promise.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.