A Search for Gravitational Radiation at LIGO: Oregon Experimental Relativity Group

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With the discovery of gravitational waves in September 2015, the LIGO collaboration is beginning a new scientific adventure by the exploration of the cosmos with gravitational waves. The Oregon group played an important role in the discovery. It is responsible for the large array of sensors which measure potential underlying terrestrial contributions to the gravitational wave signals, for example from ground motion, ambient magnetic or radio-frequency fields, acoustic noise, etc. This work will continue to be crucial over the next three years of this award, as LIGO expects to detect many gravitational-wave signals, perhaps arising from a wide variety of astrophysical sources. In fact, the other key contribution of the Oregon group is the search for one class of such sources - those associated with gamma-ray bursts. The discovery sparked tremendous public interest, reflecting the public appetite for the exploration of our universe. The publication of the scientific results from this research program has already contributed to advancement of other scientific disciplines, most notably astronomy. Finally, the education of the graduate students and postdoctoral associates working on the project will advance the technical workforce.The Oregon group has been a key player in developing the readiness of the LIGO detectors and its associated scientific program. Starting with the earliest data taking with initial LIGO, the group has made key contributions in the areas of characterization of detector background noise and in the data analysis techniques involving associated astrophysical signals. Specifically, on the instrument side, they have learned how to characterize the coupling of all known sources of environmental disturbances with gravitational-wave detection, and to monitor these couplings. Here, "environment" corresponds to any external influence other than gravitational waves. This allows LIGO to make clear statements about the potential contributions of such disturbances to putative gravitational-wave detections. On the data analysis side, the Oregon group has pioneered the science program which searches for transient gravitational-wave signals associated with astrophysical events which are well localized in time and sky position, and which are potential GW sources. These external "triggers" include gamma rays from GRBs, x-ray bursts from magnetars, and neutrinos from core-collapse supernovae.