2012-12-10

gravitational radiation all the time

Two long meetings today with Mike Kesden (NYU) and Gabe Perez-Giz (NYU) about gravitational radiation. In the first we discussed the idea (from Lam Hui) that binary pulsars could be used as resonant detectors of gravitational radiation. We agree with Hui's conclusions (that they can, but that they aren't all that sensitive at present) but we disagree with the interpretation of the result in terms of sources. We are trying to write a clarifying document. Or at least Kesden is.

In the second conversation we talked about doing an external analysis of extant LIGO data. I have various ideas about modeling the strain or strain noise using the (massive, abundant) LIGO housekeeping data, to increase the sensitivity of the experiment to real gravitational signals. We talked about a wide range of things and tentatively agreed that we should explore entering into a memorandum-of-understanding with the LIGO Collaboration. But first we are going to do a tiny bit more homework. That is, Perez-Giz is going to.

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