RUI: Parameter Estimation, Data Analysis, and Detector Characterization for LIGO

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The observation of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) will be a tremendous scientific accomplishment, but the resources provided through this grant will create many other positive opportunities. Carleton College is a leader in producing future scientists. This project will provide research opportunities to students with interests in physics and statistics, and help train them to become the next generation of scientists. Carleton students are eager to participate in exciting research, and their interest in gravitational wave astronomy, and science in general, is large. The computational statistical methods developed as a consequence of this project have, and will continue to have significant influence in other scientific fields: astrophysics, chaos studies, and gravitational wave detectors in space. The project will also continue to provide material that will improve teaching at the college level; subjects that will benefit from the science covered in this project include optics, general relativity, and statistics. This project also creates opportunities for scientific outreach; high school students and high school teachers will continue to be exposed to the wonder and significance of LIGO's research, and this outreach creates much excitement for science and physics. Finally, the research work of this project promotes international scientific collaboration. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916; a century later we should actually observe gravitational waves, and consequently the scientific and educational benefit will be tremendous.Events seen by LIGO will produce a wealth of astrophysical information, the extraction of which will require advanced techniques in data analysis, parameter estimation, and statistics. Detector characterization work will provide scientists with confidence in the quality of the data, and the performance of the detectors. Carleton College will continue with its significant efforts in identifying and characterizing noise in LIGO data; this information will be fed back to the interferometer operators in order to improve the detector performance. Carleton and colleagues are researching how to eliminate magnetic field noise from the Schumann resonances that is coherent in the LIGO-Virgo detector network. Carleton will use LIGO data to observe a cosmologically produced stochastic gravitational wave background. Carleton will contribute to the effort to detect long duration gravitational waves by correlating data from two detectors, and using pattern recognition techniques to look for signals. The Carleton team will develop Bayesian parameter estimation methods to extract physical parameters associated with core collapse supernova produced gravitational wave signals.