LIGO Magazine, Issue 4, 3/2014
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LIGO Scientific Collaboration Scientific LIGO online issue 4 3/2014 LIGO MAGAZINE The Future LIGO and Virgo in 2020 Installing the Advanced LIGO detector at LIGO Livingston: A brief history p. 6 Advanced LIGO Coating Research Technology p. 10 ... and 4 pages of LIGO Outreach. Title image The Transmission Monitoring Suspension (TMS) hangs behind the End Test Mass. The lower section directly behind the Test Mass consists of a telescope, which carries the transmitted light to an optics table suspended on the upper level. The TMS suspension can be seen clearly in the accompanying photo in the “Installation of the Advanced LIGO Detector at LIGO Livingston” article in this issue (pp. 6-7). In particular one can see the larger telescope mirrors at the bottom level and some components on the optic table above. The purple and green colors come from the coatings on the optics. Photo by Michael Fyffe, LIGO Livingston Image credits Photos appear courtesy of LIGO Laboratory/LIGO Scientific Collaboration unless otherwise noted. pp. 6-7 Top image, credit: Michael Fyffe, LIGO Livingston pp. 8-9 Credit: Michael Fyffe, LIGO Livingston pp. 10-11 Image credit: Gregg Harry p. 12 Image credit: GariLynn Billingsley p. 13 Figure from G. Harry (for the LSC), CQG 27 (2010) 084006 p. 14 Credit: CNRS Photothèque - Hubert Raguet p. 17 Top figure by Patrick Sutton, bottom figure from LSC/Virgo article “Prospects for Localization of Gravitational Wave Transients by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo Observatories”, http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0670 pp. 20-21 Images courtesy of David Kelley and Antonio Perreca p. 24 Image courtesy of the Heritage University p. 23 Chart courtesy of Jerome Degallaix p. 25 Space Time Quest drawings by Paul Fulda p. 26 Right photo by Ismail Tuzhaev, courtesy of Pablo Rosado, MPI/AEI p. 27 Left image courtesy of Kelly Gorham, Senior News Photographer at Montana State University – The immersive art installation Black (W)hole p. 27 Right image courtesy of LIGO Livingston Science Education Center p. 32 Sketch by Hannah Fair Upcoming Events (compiled by the editors) The LSC-VIRGO March Meeting 3rd Session of the Sant Cugat Forum Gravitational-wave Astrophysics at the 17 – 21 March 2014, on Astrophysics, Gravitational Waves 40th COSPAR Scientific Assembly Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Astrophysics 2 –10 August 2014, Moscow, Russia Nice, France 22 – 25 April 2014, Sant Cugat, Spain https://www.cospar-assembly.org/ http://lvc2014-nice.sciencesconf.org/ http://www.ice.csic.es/research/ forum/2014.html The LSC-VIRGO September Meeting Stellar tango at the Rockies 25 – 29 August 2014, 23 – 28 March 2014, 10th International LISA Symposium Stanford University, Stanford, California Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada (LISA Symposium X) http://astro.physics.ualberta.ca/rockies14/ 18 – 23 May 2014, Gainesville, Florida 11th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on http://www.phys.ufl.edu/lisasymposiumx/ Gravitational Waves The Structure and Signals of Neutron 21 – 26 June 2015, Gwangju, Korea Stars, from Birth to Death The Gravitational-Wave Advanced 24 – 28 March 2014, Florence, Italy Detector Workshop 2014 http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay. 25 – 30 May 2014, Takayama, Japan A public web page with a calendar and list py?ovw=True&confId=264202 of upcoming conferences and meetings Aspen Workshop: Ultra-compact that may be of interest to members of the APS April Meeting 2014 Binaries as Laboratories for LSC is now available on ligo.org: 5 – 8 April 2014, Savannah, GA Fundamental Physics https://wiki.ligo.org/LSC/UpcomingCon- http://www.aps.org/meetings/april/index.cfm 8 – 29 June 2014, Aspen Center for Physics, ferencesAndMeetings Aspen, Colorado 2 Contents 2 Upcoming events 4 Welcome 4 LIGO Scientific Collaboration News 6 Installation of the Advanced LIGO detector at LIGO Livingston 10 History of Advanced LIGO Coating Research 15 LIGOku 16 Looking to the Future: LIGO and Virgo in 2020 19 Starting Right: Building an LSC clean lab from the ground up 22 On the life and death of simulation codes 24 Community activities: Checking in with LIGO Public Outreach 28 Reaching out to Klingons 30 GWPAW 2013: Impressions from India 32 We Hear That ... 33 Recent Papers ... 35 Corner Station: Crossword Puzzle 35 Masthead 36 How to make a LIGO mirror coating LIGO Magazine Download Statistics The LIGO Magazine has become an important way for the LSC to communicate its activities and share information, both within the collaboration and outside of it. As of January 2014, the 3 published issues of the magazine have been downloaded from the ligo.org server a total of 5800, 3300 and 2200 times respec- tively. We as editors are very pleased with the strong interest in the LIGO Magazine and look forward to expanding the impact of our stories from around LIGO to an increasing number of interested readers! Download statistics for the LIGO Magazine from September 2012 until January 2014. Image credit: Lucia Santamaria with data from the ligo.org server 3 Welcome to the fourth issue of the LIGO Magazine! With the advanced detectors moving closer to operation, 2014 is set to be an exciting year for the gravitational wave community. We think this would be a good moment to feature bits of the past, the present, and the future of LIGO in the magazine. This issue’s story “Looking to the future: LIGO and Virgo in 2020” focuses on possible observations that await us in the era of an advanced detector network, we also retrace the develop- ment of the mirror coatings in “History of Advanced LIGO coating research”, and our correspondent from the LIGO Livingston site provides an inside view of the “Installation of the Advanced LIGO detector at LIGO Livingston”, currently nearing completion. We also take a look at some of the many diverse and colorful outreach activities related to gravitational waves in the larger collaboration. It is very exciting to see, and be part of, this rapidly advancing and evolving field and we thank all the contributors who invested their time and effort to report to us in the form of articles, photographs, and news items! Andreas Freise The LIGO Magazine has now been downloaded more than 10,000 times from the main for the Editors LIGO webpage, a sign that it is becoming an important way to share information within and outside the collaboration. We have started to prepare our next issue for September of this year. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or stories, please get in touch and drop us an email at [email protected]. LIGO Scientific Collaboration News I hope you have enjoyed a happy holiday working groups, respectively, replacing season with family and friends – we are Yanbei Chen and Rana Adhikari. Ik Siong now highly engaged again in the 2014 ac- Heng was elected co-chair of the burst tivities in the LSC and elsewhere. group, replacing Laura Cadonati. Joc- elyn Read is the new co-chair of the LSC The Election and Membership Commit- Academic Advisory Committee, replacing tee has been very busy over the past few Alberto Vecchio. The 2013 elections for months. Barry Barish and Peter Saulson LAAC positions also saw Beverly Berger were elected to the LSC Executive Commit- elected new Senior Member, replacing tee, replacing Nergis Mavalvala and Laura Laura Cadonati, and Matthew Pitkin and Cadonati, who is continuing as member Maggie Tse elected Postdoc and Gradu- Gaby (Gabriela) González of the Executive Committee due to her ate Student Representatives, respectively, LSC spokesperson new role of LSC Data Analysis Coordina- replacing Jocelyn Read and Laura Nuttall. tor. Roman Schnabel and Matt Evans were As we write, nominations are sought for elected chairs of the Quantum Noise and candidates in the elections of Optics, Sus- Advanced Interferometer Configuration pension and Isolations, Stochastic, Con- 4 tinuous Waves, and Compact Binary Co- the electromagnetic spectrum. The future We are discussing many important issues alescence working group co-chairs. Many is close, and we have a lot of work to do in the collaboration, like how to best (and other groups and committees saw new to be ready ourselves for the smooth and fairly) give academic and visible credit to appointments in the last months of 2013. fast searches of the detectors’ data. We all contributing LSC members, especially David McClelland was appointed chair of will also have signed the most important those looking for career opportunities. the Instrument Science working groups, agreement we have, with our Virgo col- Your opinions are very important – please replacing Rana Adhikari, Laura Cadonati leagues. We are all together entering the let us know what you think, answering and Steve Fairhurst were appointed co- new era of advanced detectors! surveys and talking or writing to us. chairs of the Data Analysis Council and the Publications and Presentations Commit- The Diversity Committee is now a joint Thanks again to all for your important con- tee, replacing Maria Alessandra Papa and LSC-Virgo Committee with Pia Astone serv- tributions – that is what makes our science Ray Frey, respectively, who stepped down ing as Virgo co-chair. Following the recom- exciting and our collaboration strong. after many years of service. We thank all mendation of the Diversity Committee, the Keep up the good work! new and past chairs, as well as all election LSC Council approved in September new candidates, for their important service to “Best Practices” for the Collaboration (LIGO- Gaby and Marco. the collaboration! M1300501). We invite everyone to read and follow these best practices to help maintain By the time you read this, we will likely a welcoming environment for all LSC mem- Before each major installation effort at LIGO have signed many agreements with as- bers. If you have at heart diversity issues Livingston the entire installation team meets to go tronomy collaborators to prepare for the (and we know many of you do!), please join over the installation procedure and safety proto- first observing run in 2015 with Advanced the Diversity Committee by subscribing to cols.