CSUF Scientists Contribute to Discovery

Cal State Fullerton — the only university in Orange County with gravitational-wave researchers and one of just three universities in Southern California involved in the global research effort — and its team of scientists and student researchers are key contributors to the first direct detection of gravitational waves.

"This discovery inaugurates a new era of astronomy, where we are able to measure the movements of black holes from across the universe by the gravitational waves they give off," said Joshua Smith, associate professor of physics, who is leading the Titan team of faculty and student physicists and mathematicians.

"Scientific advances in technology and astrophysics have now allowed us to observe two of Einstein's general theory of relativity's most elusive predictions: the existence of gravitational waves and black holes. From this point on, we will continue to observe the universe in this completely new and exciting way," Smith said.

The technology required for LIGO also has led to advancements in lasers, optics and detection science, and through research and development, will continue to do so into the future, Smith added.

CSUF collaborators with Smith are faculty colleagues Jocelyn Read and Geoffrey Lovelace, both assistant professors of physics; and Alfonso Agnew, professor of mathematics. As members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Smith, Read and Lovelace are co-authors of the Physical Review Letters journal article outlining the discovery. Joseph Areeda, a computation specialist in Cal State Fullerton's Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center, along with six CSUF physics graduates, also are co-authors. Additionally, Smith served as one of the primary editors of the discovery article, along with physicists from Caltech, MIT, Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, University of Paris and the University of Rome.

"It's been a tremendous honor for me to serve as one of the six primary editors on the paper. This team coordinated the writing and figures describing the collaborative work that led to this landmark discovery," Smith said.

Read is involved with preparing public material explaining the discovery and contributed to work estimating the parameters of the gravitational-wave source that is detailed in a companion paper; and Lovelace and his students contributed simulations of two black holes merging that are featured in the journal article.

For the last several years, the Titan physicists also have served in key roles with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Smith has chaired the collaboration's detector characterization group and served on its executive committee. Read currently serves as co-lead of the binary neutron star sub-group and has served as co-chair of the Academic Advisory Committee and an editor of LIGO Magazine. Additionally, Lovelace serves on the executive committee of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes numerical-relativity collaboration, a multi-institutional research effort, which includes CSUF.

CSUF Gravitational-Wave Researchers

Smith joined Cal State Fullerton in 2010 to help launch and build the gravitational-wave research program. His research — funded by the National Science Foundation and Research Corporation for Science Advancement — focuses on identifying and removing sources of noise in the Advanced LIGO instruments to improve the quality of the data in searching for gravitational waves. Read more... (http://news.fullerton.edu/2013sp/Smith-Award.asp)

Read is an astrophysicist who explores how neutron stars can produce gravitational waves. She studies how matter behaves at extremely high densities inside neutron stars and how that activity might be measured from astronomical observations of gravitational waves. Read more... (http://news.fullerton.edu/2013fa/gravitational-wave-research.asp)

Lovelace is a computational relativist who creates and studies computer simulations and visualizations to better predict the sources of gravitational waves, such as colliding black holes or a black hole tearing apart a neutron star. Both Lovelace and Read joined CSUF in 2012 and collaborate using a supercomputer, the Orange County Relativity Cluster for Astronomy (ORCA), specially built for the CSUF research efforts to observe gravitational waves. Read more... (http://news.fullerton.edu/2013fa/gravitational-wave-research.asp)

Agnew, a CSUF alumnus, studies theoretical relativity with his research focusing on mathematical methods to find and study cosmological and astrophysical solutions of Einstein’s equations. Specific to the LIGO experiment, he is examining methods and complex analytical techniques to build and study models of the objects that emit the gravitational-wave signals.