Proposed Projects

• Testing fused silica springs for 3rd generation gravitational wave detectors:
  Testing the bending strength of fused silica springs for applications in future 3rd generation gravitational wave detectors. The project will combine Finite Element Analysis of the stress in springs and measurements of the breaking strength under bending loads. The latter will be provided via high speed camera footage. You will gain experience in FEA and estimating the seismic and thermal noise of the fused silica monolithic suspensions.
  Mentor: Giles Hammond
  Related Project 2023: “An experimental design for the characterization of fused silica fiber lifetimes in air and vacuum conditions”
  Related Project 2018: “Fused silica and silicon spring blades for the AEI prototype suspension“
• Citizen science and LIGO: Investigating gravitational-wave data quality with Gravity Spy :
  Gravitational-wave detectors like Advanced LIGO are extremely complicated and sensitive machines. Instrumental or environmental sources of noise can adversely impact the data quality, in particularly by introducing short bursts of noise known as glitches. Glitches complicate the analysis of gravitational-wave signals. The first step in eliminating glitches is identifying a common pattern between multiple classes. There are many known classes of glitch, but still many waiting to be discovered. The Gravity Spy project aims to identify glitches. Citizen science volunteers of the Zooniverse platform classify glitches, and when they find something new, assemble a proposal for new glitch classes.
  The goal of this project is to vet proposals for new glitch classes. This will involve taking a collection of glitches, cross-referencing their times with the state of the LIGO observatories, and trying to identify a common theme. Students will need to study procedures for detector characterisation, and learn about the internal workings of the LIGO detectors. The scope of the project is open-ended: Some proposals can be dismissed quickly, while others require an in-depth investigation. Once an investigation is complete, the verdict on the glitch proposal should be reported to the Gravity Spy team, and the volunteers on Zooniverse (ideally in a blog post). This project would especially suit someone interested in science communication or public engagement with research.
  Mentor: Christopher Berry

Past Projects

• Probing properties of binary black hole mergers using numerical relativity waveforms and Bayesian methods:
  Many breakthroughs been made in modelling binary black hole mergers over the last few years. However, there are still some systems (eg. non-aligned, precessing mergers) that pose a challenge due to the number of degrees of freedom in these simulations. Therefore, it is not straightfoward to characeterise and study these systems. This data analysis project will test different analysis techniques developed for Burst gravitational wave detection and characterise their performance for different binary black hole merger waveforms. Methods for distinguishing between waveforms from simulations with different physical properties and studying various aspects of numerical simulations of binary black hole mergers will also be investigated.
  Mentor: Ik Siong Heng

Related Project 2014: Developing the Astronomy of Black Hole Mergers with Gravitational Waves

• Material properties of ion-beam coatings:
  Ion-beam coatings are used to tailor the reflectivity of mirrors in interferometric gravitational wave detectors. The thermal noise in these coatings will limit the performance of future gravitational wave detectors such as Advanced LIGO. The thermal noise is a function of material parameters such as thermal conductivity, linear expansion coefficient, and Youngs modulus of the coating materials. The student will assess technqiues for studying these properties, then carry out measurements of different ion-beam coatings to optimize the coating procedures.
  Mentors: Iain Martin, Sheila Rowan

Related Project 2008: “Ellipsometry, Optical Spectrum Analyser and Atomic Force Microscope:  measuring surface layer properties”
Related Project 2009: “Loss Processes at Elevated Temperature”
Related Project 2010: “Loss Measurements of Waveguide Grating Cantilevers”
Related Project 2011: “Determining thermal noise limiting properties of thin films”
Related Project 2012: “Material Properties of Ion Beam Coatings for use in Gravitational Wave Interferometers”
Related Project 2015: “Mechanical Loss and Deposition of Mirror Coatings on Silica”

• Model selection and data quality:
  In gravitational wave detectors, it is important to identify transients from local environmental sources and exclude them from being candidate gravitational waves. If the detector is suffering from a constant noise source of a transient nature, one can identify the characteristics of this population of noise transients. Information about the transient noise population can then be used remove these transients from gravitational wave searches or diagnose problems in the detector hardware.
  This project will involve the use of pre-existing Matlab code to identify transient populations in gravitational wave data. Investigations into the effects of the transient populations on gravitational wave searches will also be performed.
  Mentor: Ik Siong Heng

Related Project 2011: Model Selection and Data Quality for Core-Collapse Supernova Waveform Simulations
Related Project 2012: Modeling Unexplained Noise in GEO600 Data