Research on Gravitational Wave Detectors

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This proposal requests support for a young investigator and her students who are working on a series of projects related to the experimental effort to detect gravitational waves with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The proposed activities include; experimental studies of vibration isolation systems needed to enable LIGO to reach its ultimate sensitivity goal for terrestrial based detectors; development of new optical sensors needed in feedback systems to control the large LIGO optics and thereby "lock" the interferometer arms in the presence of background motion; development of new diagnostic techniques to measure and evaluate earth-motion that produces gravitational gradients that may limit the sensitivity of advanced detectors; development of analysis techniques to extract gravitational wave signals from the LIGO data stream in the presence of background noise.The PI is a leader in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration group that is charged with analyzing LIGO data for evidence of "burst" sources of gravitational waves and setting upper limits on amplitude and rates of such signals.