LIGO Instrument and Data Characterization

该奖项支持相对论和相对论天体物理学的研究，并解决了NSF“宇宙之窗”大构想的优先领域。过去几年引力波天文学非常激动人心，2015年首次探测到13亿年前黑洞碰撞产生的引力波，2021年发表了50多项探测结果；路易斯安那州立大学的研究小组一直是这些发现的关键贡献者。该小组在未来几年的活动将集中在先进LIGO探测器的改进和先进LIGO干涉仪数据的表征方面。这些努力与LIGO科学合作组织（LSC）的工作完全整合，并与LIGO利文斯顿天文台的活动密切相关，因为该天文台距离路易斯安那州立大学校园仅30英里。在进行研究时，该小组将培养学生和博士后，以提高STEM劳动力的质量和多样性，并与公众分享研究成果。LSU小组将在两个主要主题上进行研究活动，所有这些主题都与LSC协调，并且关键是使用先进的LIGO探测器提高引力波的探测率。第一个主题是关于高级LIGO探测器的特征及其在未来设计中的应用；该小组将通过对对准自由度的感知和控制，以及悬浮质量的反馈控制，帮助诊断和改善探测器在频域的噪声。该小组将对系统的性能进行建模，将模型与实际性能进行比较，然后将模型和经验应用于升级探测器的此类系统的概念开发。第二个主题是分析高级LIGO探测器的数据；该小组将识别仪器制品，特别是那些与该小组在散射源方面的专业知识有关的制品。该小组将在可能的情况下消除瞬变的原因，并找出最影响LIGO数据中天体物理信号低延迟搜索的人为因素。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. The last several years were very exciting in gravitational wave astronomy, with the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015 from a collision of black holes 1.3 billion years ago, and with more than 50 detections published in 2021; the LSU group has been a critical contributor to these discoveries. The group's activities in the next years will focus on aspects of improvement of the Advanced LIGO detectors and the characterization of data from the Advanced LIGO interferometer. These efforts are fully integrated with those of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and are closely related with the activities of the LIGO Livingston Observatory, since that Observatory is located only 30 miles from the LSU campus. In doing its research, the group will train students and a postdoc who will add to the quality and diversity of the STEM workforce, as well as share the research with the general public.The LSU group will pursue research activities in two main topics, all coordinated with the LSC and key to the improvement of detection rates of gravitational waves with the Advanced LIGO detectors. The first topic is about characterizing the Advanced LIGO detector and applications to future designs; the group will help diagnosing and improving the detector's noise in the frequency domain due to the sensing and control of the alignment degrees of freedom, and the feedback control of the suspended masses. The group will model the performance of the system, compare models with actual performance, and then apply the models and the experience to the conceptual development of such systems for upgraded detectors. The second topic is analyzing data from Advanced LIGO detector; the group will identify instrumental artifacts, in particular those related to the group's expertise on scattering sources. The group will eliminate the cause of the transients when possible, and find out the artifacts that most affect the low latency searches for astrophysical signals in LIGO data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.