LIGO India will 'refine the physics' of gravitational waves detection, exploration of universe: LHO's Fred Raab

New Delhi: As India is getting ready to set up the world's third advanced LIGO observatory, Fred Raab, an official of the international collaboration, said he expected Indian scientists and researchers to play a crucial role in the LIGO research that seeks to give us a deeper understanding of the universe by tracking the gravitational waves.

According to Fred Raab, associate director for operations, LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO India project is likely to be commissioned in 2024 and its activities would require Indian universities churning out young researchers trained in the science to contribute in cutting-edge physics experiment.

“We hope by 2024 a crew of Indian PhDs trained in the science will be commissioning those machines and beginning first observations,” said Raab.

Speaking at the ‘LIGO-India: International Collaboration Coming to India to Help Explore the Universe’ at the Presidency University in Kolkata, Raab said the proposed India-based observatory will “refine the physics” of gravitational waves detection and exploration of the universe.

India will set up it’s first LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) laboratory in Aundh in Hingoli district of Maharashtra.

It will be built as a joint scientific collaboration between LIGO laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the US, and three lead Indian institutions, namely, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar, and Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.

The proposed LIGO-India project aims to move one Advanced LIGO detector from Hanford to India.

“The effect will be dramatic because it will give us tremendous location information on where the (gravitational waves) sources are. You turn on the detector in India and everywhere in the sky you can pinpoint the sources much better,” explained Raab, who also served as the head of the LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO).

However, to what extent the activities succeed depends on availability of trained scientists.

“We have opened up this vast new frontier but how well this is explored will depend on raising up in Indian universities, a generation of experimental scientists who will pursue the advancement of these detectors,” he said.

Dubbing the detectors as “devilishly complex” and “the most sensitive measuring devices on earth”, Raab said the intent is that “LIGO India will be equally sensitive” as the other detectors.

LIGO research is carried out by the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration in Europe.

The LIGO is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to use them as an astronomical tool. Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry.

LIGO is the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

(With IANS inputs)