India Approves Construction of Its Own LIGO Gravitational-Wave Detector

 The Indian government has approved the construction of LIGO-India, a $320-million project nearly identical to the twin LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) facilities in the US. The observatory, expected to begin observations by the end of the decade, will significantly enhance scientists’ ability to pinpoint the sources of gravitational waves and answer fundamental questions about the universe. LIGO-India will be part of a global network of gravitational-wave observatories, joining Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, and will fill in blind spots in the current network. Credit: Caltech

India has approved the construction of LIGO-India, a gravitational-wave observatory that will join a global network, enhancing the ability to pinpoint sources of gravitational waves and answer fundamental questions about the universe.

The Indian government has granted the final approvals necessary for construction to begin on LIGO-India, a nearly identical version of the twin LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) facilities that made history after making the first direct detection of ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves in 2015. The Indian government will spend about $320 million to build LIGO-India, with first observations expected by the end of the decade.

“We’ve worked very hard over the past few years to bring a LIGO detector to India,” says David Reitze, the executive director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech. “Receiving the green light from the Indian government is a very welcome development that will benefit not only India but the entire international gravitational-wave community.”

“As the newest gravitational-wave detector, LIGO-India will have all of our latest and best techniques incorporated from the get-go,” says Rana Adhikari, a professor of physics at Caltech who helps lead the development of LIGO-India along with Reitze and others on the LIGO team, in collaboration with Indian scientists.

LIGO-India is a collaboration between the LIGO Laboratory—operated by Caltech and MIT and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)—and India’s Raja Ramanna Center for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), and the Department of Atomic Energy Directorate of Construction Services and Estate Management (DCSEM). The planned facility—which, like the LIGO observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, will include an L-shaped interferometer with 4-kilometer-long arms—will be built near the city of Aundha in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

When LIGO-India is completed, it will join a global network of gravitational-wave observatories that includes Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan. With its advanced gravitational-wave-sensing technology, LIGO-India will greatly improve the ability of scientists to pinpoint the sky locations of the sources of gravitational waves. Because of its location on Earth with respect to LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA, it will also fill in blind spots in the current gravitational-wave network.

“LIGO-India will increase the precision with which we can localize the gravitational-wave events by an order of magnitude,” says Adhikari. “This will greatly enhance our ability to answer fundamental questions about the universe, including how black holes form and the expansion rate of our universe, as well as to more rigorously test Einstein’s general theory of relativity.”

“I am very pleased to learn of the Indian Cabinet’s approval of construction funding for a gravitational-wave observatory there,” says NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Partnering with like-minded nations like India who share our values and aspirations will not only make possible fantastic discoveries but, more importantly, energize talent and unleash innovation everywhere. Utilizing high-tech interferometer components developed by the NSF-funded LIGO collaboration, LIGO-India will augment the existing network of gravitational-wave detectors—the two LIGO detectors in the U.S., Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan—to enable more precise identification of the location of gravitational-wave sources and more robust monitoring of their signals. This will give a big boost to researchers around the world who will combine observations from optical and radio telescopes with the information from the gravitational-wave network to make new discoveries about the universe.”

So far, LIGO and Virgo have detected the massive rumblings of dozens of collisions between black holes. In 2017, the observatories also detected a collision between neutron stars that sent out not only gravitational waves but a powerful burst of light waves spanning the electromagnetic spectrum. Because all three gravitational-wave detectors (LIGO’s twin facilities and Virgo) were observing the sky during the 2017 event, scientists were able to narrow down the region of sky where the event occurred. This proved to be a crucial factor in guiding the light-based telescopes to pinpoint the precise location of the spectacular blast. The light-based observations led to the discovery that heavy elements, such as gold, were forged in the cosmic explosion.

Since that event, one more collision involving neutron stars was confidently detected by the LIGO-Virgo network, although it was not seen with light-based telescopes. With LIGO-India’s eyes on the sky, spotting these so-called multi-messenger events (where light and gravitational waves are the messengers) should become an easier task.

Some preconstruction activities for LIGO-India have already taken place, such as the design of the LIGO-India buildings, the construction of the roads that lead into the site, and the fabrication and testing of vacuum chambers. The facility will be built by Indian researchers working jointly with members of the LIGO team.

The international collaboration has already resulted in an exchange of ideas and new relationships between the two countries. For instance, dozens of Indian students have been chosen to work with the LIGO team as part of Caltech’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. In addition, Caltech plans to invite several visiting scientists from India to work on LIGO at Caltech.

“Having a distant third LIGO observatory in the international network, which benefits from common instrument designs, commissioning knowledge, technical coordination, and sensitivity, will fulfill a longstanding LIGO goal,” says Fred Raab, the former associate director for observatory operations at LIGO Hanford who has been working on the LIGO-India project for nearly a decade. “This will be a game-changer for science.”

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Secrets of the universe: India approves $320m gravitational wave detector

 

The government of India has approved the construction of a $320m observatory to detect gravitational waves from space to help answer fundamental questions about the universe, the SciTechDaily website reports.

Gravitational waves are caused by highly energetic events in deep space such as supernovae and the collision of binary neutron stars. The first such wave was detected in 2015.

Accurately detecting and interpreting waves requires a global network of specialist observatories that work together to identify which part of the universe they came from.

The Indian observatory fills a gap in that network, which currently consists of facilities in the US, Italy, and Japan.

‘Latest and best techniques’

It will be called LIGO-India, with the acronym referring to “laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory”. It will be sited near the city of Aundha in the state of Maharashtra. India’s Atomic Energy and Science and Technology departments will build it.

Providing the expertise will be a collaboration between Caltech and MIT in the US and three Indian research bodies: the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore, the Institute for Plasma Research Ahmedabad and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics Pune.

“We’ve worked very hard over the past few years to bring a LIGO detector to India,” said David Reitze, the executive director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech.

Rana Adhikari, a professor of physics at Caltech, added that the detector would “have all of our latest and best techniques incorporated from the get-go”.

Was Einstein right?

When complete by the end of the decade, LIGO-India will join LIGOs at Livingstone in Louisiana and Hanford in Washington State, which are operated by MIT and Caltech. Other detectors are the Virgo LIGO located near Pisa and the University of Tokyo’s KAGRA detector, near Nagoya.

The observatory consists of two interferometers, each 4km long, made up of 1.2m-wide steel vacuum tubes. These “marvels of precision engineering”, in the words of Caltech, are arranged in an L shape and are covered by a thick concrete enclosure. Lasers measure the movement of light in the tubes when a gravitational wave passes through.

Adhikari says the new detector will increase the global network’s sensitivity by an order of magnitude.

“This will greatly enhance our ability to answer fundamental questions about the universe, including how black holes form and the expansion rate of our universe, as well as to more rigorously test Einstein’s general theory of relativity,” he said.

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Northwestern to host gravitational-wave researchers from around the globe

 Gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 — were detected for the first time on Sept. 14, 2015. A small group of Northwestern University faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students were a critical part of that historic discovery, made by a team of more than 1,000 scientists and engineers from around the world.

Since that thrilling detection of a gravitational-wave signal produced by the collision of two massive black holes, more than 90 signals from the mergers of black holes and/or neutron stars have been discovered using sophisticated detectors in the U.S. (LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston) and Italy (Virgo). Another detector in Japan, KAGRA, is expected to join the LIGO and Virgo detectors later this year in their next observing run.

Now hundreds of gravitational-wave researchers involved in these discoveries are coming to Northwestern for an international conference March 13-17.

The community of the three science collaborations holds working meetings twice a year, one in the U.S. and one elsewhere. This month’s conference, the first in-person meeting in the U.S. since the pandemic, will be hosted by Northwestern’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA). 

“The face-to-face presentations, discussions and brainstorming during the conference are critical as we feverishly prepare for our next period of gravitational-wave discoveries with detectors featuring the highest sensitivity ever,” CIERA director Vicky Kalogera said. She is the faculty lead of the Northwestern group in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

While the scientific conference is closed to the public, CIERA is holding two related public events on Tuesday, March 14:

“Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and the Machines That Detect Them”

Gabriela González, one of four scientists who announced the first detection of gravitational waves to the public, will deliver a general talk about the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. She will discuss the history and details of the observations since September 2014 and the detectors that make such observations possible. González is a founding member of the LSC and was the spokesperson at the time of the first discovery.

The talk will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the McCormick Auditorium of Norris University Center.

“Astronomy on Tap”

At this informal event, and on Pi Day (Einstein’s birthday), Northwestern astronomers will talk about pi, gravitational waves and black holes. Questions from the audience are welcome. A trivia contest will give attendees a chance to win a pie.

The event begins at 7 p.m. at Five & Dime, 1026 Davis St. in Evanston. Space is limited to the first 50 people.

“Northwestern and CIERA were offered the opportunity to host the meeting because of Northwestern’s consistent scientific involvement in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaborations,” said Zoheyr Doctor, CIERA Board of Visitors Research Assistant Professor in Kalogera’s group. “It is a huge honor for us to host this conference at Northwestern — our last opportunity to be together before the new observing run.” 

Doctor and Madeline Wilson, CIERA’s events and marketing coordinator, are the lead organizers of the hybrid conference. Close to 400 scientists and engineers are expected to attend in person, and more will attend virtually.

David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory, is one of the scientists who will attend.

“The Northwestern CIERA LSC group has done outstanding work on understanding what gravitational-wave detections tell us about how, and how many, black holes are produced in the universe,” said Reitze, a Caltech physicist and Northwestern alumnus. “I’m delighted to return to Northwestern to plan for the next LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observational campaign.”

The advanced gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA international collaboration have been shut down since March 27, 2020, so their sensitivity could be improved. The next observing run — the fourth such run — is scheduled to start on May 24 and last approximately 18 months. This new run will enable scientists to learn more about the nature of black holes, neutron stars, gravity and more. 

“With the detectors’ increased sensitivity, we expect to listen to even fainter black-hole mergers, to go farther back in time,” Kalogera said. “We also are excited to take another big step for multi-messenger astrophysics, discovering neutron star collisions in both gravitational and electromagnetic waves.

 Multi-messenger astronomy and the study of black holes are both areas of leadership by CIERA researchers.”CIERA is one of Northwestern’s 35 University-wide research institutes and centers (URICs) attracting talent from across Northwestern. Read more about these cross-disciplinary hubs in Vice President for Research Milan Mrksich’s recent essay on Leadership Notes.

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India to soon get Ligo to catch gravitational waves: What is it and why is this detector needed?

 

Centre has cleared the way for the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the country at a cost of Rs 2600.

By India Today Science Desk: When two big black holes collide, they release a massive ripple in the vastness of space that contains information about their origins, properties, and answers to some of the biggest secrets in the universe. An Indian observatory will soon be able to not just catch those waves but also reveal the secrets they hide.

The Centre has cleared the way for the construction of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the country. The facility will be built at an estimated cost of Rs 2,600 crore by the year 2030.

The facility will observe the gravitational waves traveling in the vastness of space from some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe and hitting Earth.

WHAT ARE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?

LIGO is a physics experiment that derives its roots in the theories of Albert Einstein, who said that when two massive objects collide they create a ripple in space and time in such a way that "waves of undulating space-time would propagate in all directions away from the source."

These cosmic ripples known as gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, carrying with them information about their origins, as well as clues to the nature of gravity itself. Physicists have said that the strongest gravitational waves are produced by cataclysmic events such as colliding black holes, stars exploding at the end of their lifetimes, and colliding neutron stars.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) is the world's most powerful observatory that exploits the physical properties of light and of space itself to detect and understand the origins of gravitational waves. At the moment there are two such observatories that are separated by a distance of 3000 kilometers that work in tandem to pick up these gravitational waves.

Gravitational wave interferometers rely on the world's most stable high-power lasers, the most precisely figured mirrors, ultraquiet vibration isolation systems, and sophisticated hierarchical feedback systems to pick up these waves emanating from the furthest reaches of the universe.

Each LIGO detector consists of two arms, each 4 kilometers long, comprising 1.2-meter-wide steel vacuum tubes arranged in an "L" shape, and covered by a 10-foot wide, 12-foot tall concrete shelter that protects the tubes from the environment.

The LIGO-India project will be built by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Science Foundation, the US, along with several national and international research and academic institutions.

"The science case for the detector is very strong for India. It will be part of a network of two gravitational detectors working in the US," Tarun Souradeep, Director Raman Research Institute, and member of the advisory committee for LIGO India told indiatoday.in.

The information gathered by LIGO India could be used in the field of gravitation, relativity, astrophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and nuclear physics.

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Year in review: Gravitational waves offer new cosmic views

 The secrets gleaned from the universe’s most mysterious giants are incongruously subtle when witnessed at Earth: Detectors budge by a tiny fraction of a proton’s breadth, outputting a feeble, birdlike chirp.

For centuries, astronomers have peered out into the universe almost exclusively by observing its light. But 2016’s announcement of the first detection of gravitational waves, produced 1.3 billion years ago in the collision of two monstrous black holes, has given scientists a whole new way of observing the heavens.

The waves tore through the cosmos at the speed of light and arrived at Earth just in time for the start-up of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, which measured the minute stretching and squeezing of space. With a second detection already recorded and more expected in 2017, scientists hope to uncover new details about elusive black holes and their pairings. Soon, as more detectors come online, scientists will even be able to pinpoint where gravitational waves originate and inspect the sky for the aftermath of the cataclysms that caused them.

“This is a great success story of science,” says astrophysicist Avi Loeb of Harvard University, who was not involved in the detection. It’s the kind of major discovery that comes along only once in a few decades, he says.

On February 11, LIGO scientists announced the discovery at a news conference in Washington, D.C., and in a paper published in Physical Review Letters. Since publication, the paper has garnered around 100 citations a month, evidence of a newly intensified focus on the waves. Some physicists had dedicated entire careers to finding the spacetime tremors, which will be a boon for researchers for decades if not centuries to come.

The patterns of ripples appeared nearly simultaneously in LIGO’s two enormous L-shaped detectors—in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La.,—on September 14, 2015. The signal closely matched that expected from a pair of black holes that spiral around one another, getting closer and closer before merging into one. At the early stages of their do-si-do, the two black holes were about 35 and 30 times the mass of the sun. The behemoths melded together into a black hole 62 times the sun’s mass, releasing three suns’ masses worth of energy (SN: 3/5/16, p. 6; SN: 7/9/16, p. 8). When scientists converted the gravitational waves into sound waves, the waves produced something like the everyday chirp of a bird, quickly rising in pitch and volume before cutting off. The sound felt like a plaintive question, as if the universe was asking, “Hello? Is anyone there?” This time, the answer was yes.

Taken on its own, the discovery was a blockbuster—confirming Einstein’s prediction that spacetime can ripple, providing an intimate new glimpse of black holes and verifying astrophysicists’ calculations for how two black holes can fuse into one. But the detection’s landmark status is largely because of its future promise. LIGO is expected to usher in a new era of astronomy, in which gravitational wave detections could become commonplace. Black holes, previously dark to humankind, will regularly communicate their coalescences to Earth.

In pursuit of this new type of astronomy, scientists have been chasing gravitational waves for decades. After such a long search, it was “incredibly gratifying,” says David Shoemaker, leader of LIGO’s efforts at MIT, “to wake up in the morning and know in my bones” that gravitational waves had finally been detected.

Almost as soon as LIGO’s updated detectors were turned on, the gravitational waves rippled by, slightly altering the length of LIGO’s ultrasensitive detectors. “We flipped the switch and said, ‘OK, we’re going to start running,’ and boom,” says LIGO laboratory executive director David Reitze of Caltech. That quick detection raised hopes among astrophysicists who daydream of datasets with tens or hundreds of such events.

Scientists hope to reconstruct how pairs of black holes find one another in the lonely universe. There are two main competing theories: Two stars could be born together like twins, with each later collapsing into a black hole, or the black holes could meet up later in life, in dense systems where many black holes and stars interact (SN Online: 6/19/16).

If researchers can triangulate the source of the waves, they can point telescopes in that direction to spot any luminous aftermath. Such a signal would be unexpected for shadowy black holes, but they aren’t the only source. Scientists expect to find undulations from smashups of neutron stars, which might produce detectable light. If luck is on LIGO’s side and a star explodes within the Milky Way, LIGO may be able to spot its gravitational fallout, too.

Combining gravitational waves with other messengers from space, including various wavelengths of light and particles such as neutrinos, will create a diverse toolkit for observing the cosmos. Scientists may even find unforeseen sources of gravitational waves, says Loeb. “There is a chance that our imagination is limited.”

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Gravitational waves: Einstein’s theory could be confirmed today

 A century ago, Albert Einstein hypothesised the existence of gravitational waves, small ripples in space and time that dash across the universe at the speed of light.

But scientists have been able to find only indirect evidence of their existence. On Thursday, at a news conference called by the US National Science Foundation, researchers may announce at long last direct observations of the elusive waves.

Such a discovery would represent a scientific landmark, opening the door to an entirely new way to observe the cosmos and unlock secrets about the early universe and mysterious objects like black holes and neutron stars.

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration are set to make what they bill as a “status report” on Thursday on the quest to detect gravitational waves. It is widely expected they will announce they have achieved their goal.

“Let’s say this: The first discovery of gravitational waves is a Nobel Prize-winning venture,” said physicist Bruce Allen of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, Germany.

“I believe in the next decade, our view of the universe is going to change really quite dramatically,” added Abhay Ashtekar, director of Penn State University’s Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos.
Einstein in 1916 proposed the existence of these waves as an outgrowth of his ground-breaking general theory of relativity.

“Gravitational waves are literally ripples in the curvature of space-time that are caused by collisions of heavy and compact objects like black holes and neutron stars,” Ashtekar said.

‘MOVING MASSES’

“They’re waves, like light or any other kind of electromagnetic radiation, except here what’s ‘waving’ is space and time itself,” said NASA astrophysicist Ira Thorpe, with the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “You get radiation, basically light, when you move some sort of charged particle. When you’re moving masses, you get gravitational waves.”

Scientists have been trying to detect them using two large laser instruments in the United States, known together as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), as well as another in Italy.
The twin LIGO installations are located roughly 1,800 miles (3,000 km) apart in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. Having two detectors is a way to sift out terrestrial rumblings, such as traffic and earthquakes, from the faint ripples of space itself.

The LIGO work is funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the US government.

All the current knowledge about the universe comes from electromagnetic waves like radio waves, visible light, infrared light, X-rays and gamma rays. But a lot of information remains hidden because such waves get scattered as they traverse the cosmos. That would not be the case with gravitational waves, making them an enticing potential source of new information.

Two types of very massive and dense celestial objects, neutron stars and black holes, have proven tough to study but could offer ideal subjects if observations of gravitational waves are possible.

“People don’t really know what’s going on inside neutron stars,” Allen said of these objects that weigh about 50 percent more than the sun but are extremely compact, only about the size of a city.

“It gives us a detailed picture of what’s happening inside or around the object that’s producing the waves. So, for example, if two black holes orbit each other, we can’t see it any way other than gravitational waves because black holes don’t emit any light, radio waves, X-rays or anything. The only way to see that is through their gravitational waves,” Allen said.

Gravitational waves also offer a way to study what the universe was like in its infancy. For the first roughly 200,000 years of its existence, light did not travel freely through the universe, Allen said, but “gravitational waves can travel freely, back to very early times.”

“So one cool thing is one day we’ll be able to see what the universe looked like in very early times using gravitational waves. That’s what actually got me interested in the field 25 years ago,” Allen said.

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