Gravitational Wave Research Project for WSP

On September 14, 2015, ripples in the fabric of spacetime produced by two black holes smashing together in a distant corner of the universe reached Earth and were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) for the first time. This first detection opened a new window onto the universe, since before we detected gravitational waves, astronomers could only use light in the form of electromagnetic waves to probe the cosmos. In this research project, you will learn about the science behind LIGO and conduct your own search for gravitational waves using the same data analysis techniques used by LIGO scientists. We will begin with an introduction to waves and signal processing techniques like the Fourier transform, which are key concepts in a variety of subfileds beyond gravitational-wave data analysis including audio engineering, video processing, wireless communications, and seismology, among many others. After learning about the waveforms produced by compact binary mergers like binary black holes and neutron stars, we will apply the matched filtering technique to search for signals in both real and simulated LIGO data using a variety of python programming tools.