There are several techniques to detect gravitational waves, depending on what the frequency of the waves is. The frequency of the radiation, in turn, depends on the astrophysical source. The most prevalent of these techniques is laser interferometers and we will discuss these at some length during the seminar. This page contains links to several other techniques used and the major international facilities currently operational, or soon to be operational ("soon" in gravitational wave detection could be a cosmological time scale, but I'll limit our tour to instruments expected within the next decade).
I will divide the seminar into
two parts. Here are sample LIGO viewgraphs and here are LISA ones. These links will be updated
by
Interferometers are a sensitive method for measuring relative displacements of mirrors (or the space-time between them) and are part of the measurement scheme for all the major earth-based observatories and for an antenna in space as well. Here are links to their home pages as well as other useful tidbits that I could find.
One of the best
- and relatively concise - descriptions of the science of LIGO appear in this article that
Daniel Sigg wrote as part of
the TASI summer study at Boulder, CO, 1998. This is the only strongly
recommended reading for the seminar.
The NASA LISA and the ESA LISA web sites.
Another
technique used for gravitational-wave detection are
resonant mass detectors, also called 'bar' detectors (probably because the
earliest ones were shaped as bars?). The principle of detection here is that a
passing gravitational wave sets the resonant mode of a massive piece of metal
vibrating. This vibration can be measured with great precision using a resonant
transducer and low-noise amplifiers. These are narrow-band antennas, since the
'bars' have narrow vibrational mode linewidths. IGEC is a
network of resonant mass detectors that are doing a coincident search for
gravitational radiation. Links to detectors that are participating in this
collaboration can be found here.
In the 10
to 100 millihertz band, there have been searches for
gravitational waves using Doppler tracking of spacecraft. Here the principle is
that the Doppler shifts of radio beams between distant spacecraft and the earth
are altered by gravitational waves. Despite the similarity in frequency bands,
the strain sensitivity of this technique is presently several orders of
magnitude higher than that expected for LISA. Here is a
talk on measurement of gravitational waves by Doppler tracking of spacecraft,
given by John Armstrong at the CaJAGWR seminar
series, Caltech, 2000.
Very low
frequency gravitational waves can be measured from pulsar timing. The most
famous case is the Nobel-prize-winning
Hulse-Taylor pulsar, PSR1913+16. A very readable review
of pulsar timing theory and measurement appears here.
And here is
a talk on measurement of nanohertz gravitational
waves using pulsar timing arrays, given by Donald Backer at the CaJAGWR seminar series at Caltech, 2001.
Sub-femtohertz frequency gravitational waves can be measured by
mapping the intensity and polarization of the CMB. The idea here is that
primordial gravitational waves produced by inflation after the Big Bang should
cause ripples on the surface of last scattering. These ripples should, in turn,
cause red- and blue-shifts in the temperature and polarization of the CMB
radiation. Here is
a rather fun Scientific American article on the subject.
Prepared by Nergis Mavalvala as a resource page for the 8.971 seminar on Wednesday, Sept. 09, 2004.