Detection of Gravitational Waves: Optical Devices, Materials, and Analysis for LIGO

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This award supports research and development for LIGO in three main areas. First, work will be done on the input optics of Advanced LIGO, including extensive high-power testing of critical optical components such as modulators, Faraday isolators, and other transmissive optics. Studies of possible damage to optical coatings from Advanced LIGO intensity levels will be carried out. Some of this work will take place at the LIGO Livingston Laboratory. Methods for active compensation of thermal lensing in these devices will be explored, and systems constructed. Thermal lensing effects will be exploited to develop an adaptive mode-matching telescope. In addition, looking further into the future, an experiment to measure near-field radiative heat transfer between cryogenically cooled mirrors will be initiated. We will also extend our work on high power adaptive optics to third generation optical components (diffraction gratings). Third, data analysis and detector characterization algorithms will continue to be developed. In particular, work will be done to develop and implement coherent network algorithms and to conduct analysis of data collected by networks of gravitational wave detectors. Cross-correlation techniques will be applied to magnetometer data at the sites, as a likely background for stochastic gravitational wave searches. Finally, contributions to the LIGO data analysis and data monitoring software will continue to be made. Students in the UF LIGO group may become involved with sophisticated methods for extraction of signals from noise, computational schemes for manipulation of huge data sets, sophisticated techniques for control and stabilization of laser wavelength and beam quality, complex mechanical engineering, demanding ultra high vacuum techniques, and many more, depending on individual interests. Moreover, the nature of the project makes these experiences available to undergraduate students as well as to graduate and postdoctoral students. Graduate students and postdoctoral students in the UF LIGO group are working in areas of high demand in the outside technical community. Finally, the research in high performance modulators, isolators, and interferometric techniques, and the advanced computational techniques being developed for LIGO have the potential to impact other areasof technology.