Precise simulations for future gravitational wave detectors
The emerging science of gravitational wave astronomy is optimistically named. Astronomy depends ultimately on observations, yet the only output of gravitational wave detectors has so far been noise generated within the instruments. There is good reason, based on experimental and theoretical progress, to believe that things are about to change. As an example of progress on the theoretical side, Kenta Kiuchi of Waseda University, Yuichiro Sekiguchi of the National Astronomical Observatory, Masaru Shibata of Kyoto University (all in Japan), and Keisuke Taniguchi of the University of Wisconsin, US, report in Physical Review Letters simulations of neutron star mergers that reveal new details of the gravitational waves they are expected to emit .
The effort to detect gravitational waves started humbly fifty years ago with Joe Weber’s bar detectors. Today the field is a thriving example of Big Science, including large facilities [3] in the US (
LIGO) and Italy (
VIRGO), smaller installations in Germany (
GEO 600) and Japan (
TAMA,
LCGT), and potential future detectors in Australia (
AIGO) and India (INDIGO). LIGO, the best funded and so far the most sensitive of these instruments, is preparing a major upgrade called
Advanced LIGO.
In parallel with the development of ground-based detectors, there has been substantial design progress for detectors in space. The principal example is LISA [4], which received effusive endorsement from the National Academy of Sciences: “LISA is an extraordinarily original and technically bold mission concept. The first direct detection of low-frequency gravitational waves will be a momentous discovery, of the kind that wins Nobel Prizes†[5]. Space-based detectors will not likely be making that low-frequency (<0.1 Hz) discovery for another ten years at least—not for lack of inherent sensitivity or progress in technology development, but rather because rapid deployment is not a characteristic of billion-dollar space research missions.
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