Participation in LIGO's Search for Gravitational Wave Bursts

LIGO 现在已达到其设计灵敏度，并已开始数据运行，旨在从其两个站点收集一年的重合数据。雪城大学引力波研究小组打算参与 LIGO 寻找引力波爆发的工作。雪城大学团队的研究将主要集中在确保地面故障不会被误认为是真正的引力波信号。他们将扩展该小组和其他人之前的工作，研究环境信号耦合到干涉仪的方式，学习识别发生时的突发耦合事件，并消除数据中的此类贡献。他们还将寻找干涉仪输出和记录的许多诊断信号之间的相关性，以便可以识别错误信号的任何原因，无论是来自外部还是内部源，并排除在进一步考虑之外。此外，它们将有助于验证干涉仪的校准，重点关注与确定突发信号强度相关的校准方面。 P.I.他将继续担任 LIGO 科学合作组织的领导者，并在 2007 年 3 月结束的当前任期内继续担任发言人。在这一职位上，他将重点与其他国家的同事合作，帮助开发确认和充分利用未来引力波发现所需的全球网络。寻找引力波爆发也许是 LIGO 取得惊人发现的最大可能性。因此，旨在区分真正的引力波爆发和虚假迹象的研究可以在确定重要发现的有效性方面发挥至关重要的作用。在从事这项工作的同时，雪城大学集团将继续其培养本科生、研究生和博士后的悠久历史，其中很大一部分人在离开该集团后继续为该领域做出进一步的重要贡献。该小组还将继续开发一套教学实验室练习，以说明 LIGO 的实验物理技术，并将这些实验室练习与 P.I. 提供的相关主题的讲座结合起来。德克萨斯大学布朗斯维尔分校以及雪城大学本科生开设的引力波天文学暑期学校。 P.I.还将继续开展一系列外展活动，包括与美国物理教师协会的会议一起举办向本科生教授广义相对论的研讨会。

LIGO has now achieved its design sensitivity, and has begun a data run intended to collect one year's worth of coincident data from its two sites. The gravitational wave research group at Syracuse University intends to participate in LIGO's search for bursts of gravitational waves. The Syracuse team's research will focus primarily on ensuring that terrestrial glitches are not mistaken for true gravitational wave signals. They will extend previous work by the group and others to study ways in which environmental signals couple into the interferometers, to learn to recognize burst-like coupling events when they occur, and to eliminate such contributions from the data. They will also look for correlation between the interferometer output and the many diagnostic signals that are recorded, so that any cause of a false signal, whether from an external or an internal source, can be recognized and excluded from further consideration. In addition, they will help to validate the calibration of the interferometers, focusing on aspects of the calibration relevant to determining the strengths of burst-like signals. The P.I. will continue as a leader of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, remaining as Spokesperson through his present term which ends March 2007. In that role, among other things, he will focus on working with colleagues in other countries to help develop the global network necessary for confirmation and full exploitation of future gravitational wavediscoveries. The search for gravitational wave bursts holds perhaps the biggest possibility for surprising discoveries by LIGO. Thus, research aimed at distinguishing genuine bursts of gravitational waves from spurious indications could play a crucial role in establishing the validity of an important discovery. While engaged in this work, the Syracuse group will continue its long history of training undergraduates, graduates, and postdocs, a significant proportion of whom have gone on to make further important contributions to the field after they have left the group. The group will also continue the development of a set of teaching lab exercises that illustrate the experimental physics techniques of LIGO, and will use those lab exercises in conjunction with the lectures on related topics offered by the P.I. at the summer school on gravitational wave astronomy run by the University of Texas, Brownsville, as well as for undergraduates at Syracuse University. The P.I. will also continue a spectrum of outreach activities, including hosting a workshop on teaching general relativity to undergraduates, in conjunction with a meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers.