Prof. Smith and his group conduct experimental research as part of the international effort to observe cosmic gravitational waves with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). They are also involved with the planning of the next generation of gravitational-wave observatories, in particular Cosmic Explorer.
Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein in 1916 as a consequence of his theory of General Relativity. In 1993 Hulse and Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize for indirect evidence that gravitational waves are being emitted from a binary system of neutron stars. Today advanced laser interferometers, such as LIGO, Virgo and GEO600, search the Universe for gravitational waves from astronomical systems including supernovae explosions, coalescing neutron star and black hole binaries, rapidly spinning neutron stars, and the Big Bang itself. In 2015, LIGO discovered gravitational waves from the merger of a binary system of black holes known as GW150914 and together with Virgo has since observed a handful of other binary black hole mergers. In 2017, LIGO and Virgo opened the field of multimessenger gravitational-wave astronomy by observing the coalescence of two netron stars in the system GW170817 and sharing its source properties with the wider astronomical community.
Cal State Fullerton became a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in 2009. In 2012, Smith founded the CSU Fullerton Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center (GWPAC), located in McCarthy Hall, room 601, to conduct gravitational-wave research, education, and outreach. Smith's experimental group is one of four research groups in the center (with the groups of Profs Agnew, Lovelace, and Read), and focuses on improving the astronomical reach of gravitational-wave detectors by developing and improving detector optical technology and by uncovering sources of noise in the detectors. The group's labs are located in Dan Black Hall, room 167.
Joshua Smith - GWPAC Director, Associate Professor of Physics
Joseph Areeda - Computational Specialist
Marissa Walker - Postdoctoral Research Associate
Michelle Aleman - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jeff Bidler - Graduate Research Assistant
Amy Gleckl - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jazlyn Guerrero - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Alexandra Macedo - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Oli Patane - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Dakota Rose - Graduate Research Assistant
Juan Rocha - Undergraduate Research Assistant
Thomas Abbott - BSc 2010, MS 2012 - Now PhD student in Gravitational Physics at Louisiana State University
Adrian Avila-Alvarez - BSc 2015, MS 2018 - Now R&D Associate Engineer at Hegefog Research Inc.
Po-Feng Chen - Summer undergraduate 2012 (STEM^2)
Evan Foley - BSc 2012, MS 2014 - Now Test Engineer at DNB Engineering
Chris Francis - MS 2010 - Now Lieutenant in US Air Force
Chris Griffo - MS 2012 - Now Optical Engineer at Celestron
Joshua Hacker - MS 2015
Skye Harris - Summer undergraduate 2010 (STEM^2) - Transferred to UC Santa Barbara
Gabriel Islas - MS 2014 - now Laboratory Engineer at Luminit, LLC
Wyatt Kiedrowski - BSc 2011
Brian Kuper - MS 2011 - Now Associate Test Lab Manager at Cytec Engineered Materials
Jackie Lee - BSc 2011, MS in Electrical Engineering 2013 , now Survivability Airframe Integration Engineer at Northrop Grumman
Veronica Lockett-Ruiz - MS 2013 - now lecturer in physics at CSUF
Philip Macias - Undergraduate student 2010 - now PhD student in astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz
Fabian Magaña-Sandoval - BSc 2012 - now PhD student in Physics at Syracuse University
Erik Muniz - BSc 2015 - Now PhD student in Physics at Syracuse University
Cinthia Padilla - BSc 2012 - Now Engineer at Northrop Grumman
Matthew Russell - Summer undergraduate 2013 (STEM^2)
Gabriela Serna - BSc 2012, MS 2012, Now PhD student in College Science Teaching at Syracuse University
Sarah Wood - Summer undergraduate 2014 (STEM^2)
Daniel Vander-Hyde - BSc 2015 - Now PhD student in Physics at Syracuse University
Bobby Wright - Undergraduate 2012 - now staff physicsist at CSUF
- The mirrors that serve as the gravitational test masses for LIGO are made of pure fused silica with high reflectivity coatings comprising multiple layers of quarter-wavelength thick dielectric materials. Ideally these mirrors would reflect most of the light that is incident on them, and transmit the rest. However, microroughness of the mirror surfaces, and impurities in the substrate and coating, ensure some level of optical scatter to angles other than the angle of reflection.
- Light scattered from LIGO optics can be both a dominant contributor to optical power loss in the interferometers and a pernicious source of noise in the detector outputs. We use a scatterometer to quantify the levels of light scattered from sample optics, and to photograph the spatial distribution of the scatter from the optical surfaces.
- A thorough characterization of the LIGO detectors is a crucial first step in searches for gravitational waves and an avenue for detector improvement. Earthbound laser interferometric detectors are sensitive not only to gravitational radiation, but also seismic motions of the earth, acoustic noise, electronic noise, etc. The CSUF group is working to understand how these sources of noise contribute to the detector output signals, and taking steps to reduce or eliminate them. In particular we are working to understand and reduce the rate of non-Guassian noise transients in the detector output signals.
Evaluating data quality in searches for neutron star and black hole coalescence:- LIGO has already measured merging black holes and systems with neutron stars are also very promising sources of gravitational waves observable by Advanced LIGO. The CSUF group aims to help understand the ways that data quality issues reduce LIGO's ability to make detections. We investigate noise artifacts in the detectors and how well data analysis can distinguish them from true astrophysical signals.
Searching for astrophysical gravitational-wave bursts:- The CSUF group is involved with searches for gravitational-wave bursts, such as supernovae explosions, merging binary systems of neutron stars, etc., using the worldwide network of interferometric gravitational-wave detectors.
Data Handling and Infrastructure for Advanced LIGO:- Advanced LIGO is expected to be sensitive enough to allow multiple gravitational-wave detections per year. In parallel with the construction and commissioning of Advanced LIGO, the data handling and software infrastructure required to analyze the data for first detections is being constructed. At CSUF we are developing software to more easily view and characterize LIGO data. An example of this is the LIGO data viewer, ligoDV.
Interested undergraduate or master's students should contact Dr. Joshua Smith.
- Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center researchers led by Lovelace (PI), Read, and Smith have begun research, togehter with colleagues from MIT, Caltech, Syracuse, and Penn State on "Collaborative Research: The Next Generation of Gravitational Wave Detectors," funded by the NSF. More details on the NSF website.
October 2015:- Undergraduate researchers Adrian Avila-Alvarez and Erik Muniz attended the 2015 SACNAS National Conference in Washington, DC. See full story in this physics department highlight.
- Smith is Co-Principal Investigator on the award, "INSPIRE: Teaming Citizen Science with Machine Learning to Deepen LIGO's View of the Cosmos," This award will support a multi-institutional project to develop a citizen science project aimed at identifying and removing noise from LIGO to improve its astronomical range. More details on the NSF website.
July 2014:- Smith is Co-Principal Investigator on the award, "MRI: Acquisition of a high-performance computer cluster for gravitational-wave astronomy with Advanced LIGO," This award will support GWPAC student research on computational gravitational-wave physics and greatly expand the GWPAC computer cluster ORCA. More details on the NSF website.
February 2013:- Smith and his group have been awarded a five-year award, "CAREER: Gravitational-Wave Detector Characterization and Science Education in the Advanced LIGO Era" to support an integrated research and education plan in gravitational-wave science at CSUF. More details on the NSF website, in this physics department highlight and in this CSUF News article.
November 2012:- Robert Wright attends SCUUR at CSU Channel Islands to present his summer research on resonant delay lines with the Syracuse University Gravitational-Wave Group. More information here.
October 2012:- GWPAC member Fabian Magaña-Sandoval, Cinthia Padilla, Gabriela Serna, and Josh Smith attend the 2012 SACNAS national meeting, see this story.
September 2012:- The Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center opens at CSUF, see this CSUF physics story and this Inside article.
January 2012:
- Joseph Areeda joins the CSUF gravitational-wave group as a staff programmer. Joe brings to our group over thirty years of software development experience. This includes owning and operating his own consulting and software development company, two decades of software development and system administration at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and leading a software project to develop a successful nuclear medicine acquisition and processing system. At Fullerton he will develop software for LIGO data handling and infrastructure, starting with the LIGO data viewer, ligoDV. For more information, see this story.
- Senior undergraduate Evan Foley joins the CSUF gravitational-wave group to start a project on software development for the LIGO data viewer, ligoDV.
- Undergraduate Cinthia Padilla attends the 2012 Western Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Stanford University, see here, and presents a poster on her research entitled "Measuring Light Scatter for Advanced LIGO Optics". For more information, see this story.
- The NSF has awarded a total of $9M over 5 years to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for "Data Handling and Infrastructure for Advanced LIGO and Beyond". This includes a budgeted $675,000 for the CSUF gravitational-wave group and Smith to hire a programmer to develop software for LIGO data handling and infrastructure. More information on this award can be found on the NSF website.
November 2011:- Italian astronomer Marica Branchesi is the first official visitor to the CSUF gravitational-wave center! Marica visited for one month to collaborrate with Smith and Griffo on astronomical image analysis as a followup to test gravitational-wave triggers. She summarized her/our research in an excellent colloquium, more details in this highlight.
October 2011:- Undergraduate students Gabriela Serna, Fabian Magaña-Sandoval and Cinthia Padilla attended the 2011 SACNAS National Conference in San Jose, CA. Cinthia presented a poster on "Electromagnetic Follow up of Gravitational-wave Signals", Fabian a poster on "Measuring Light Scatter for Future LIGO Optics" and Gaby a poster on "Instructional Reformation to Increase Knowledge Gained in Introductory Astronomy". Josh Smith also attended the conference and helped staff the LIGO booth. For more information, see this highlight.
August 2011:- Smith has been funded to establish a new Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center by the University's Center and Institute Planning and Expansion Program, see the physics homepage.
- Undergraduates Bobby Wright, Fabian Magaña-Sandoval, and Cinthia Padilla presented results of their summer gravitational-wave research at the department colloquium, see this article.
July 2011:- Undergraduate Cinthia Padilla is spending the summer in South Korea, bookended with two trips to Paris as part of the University of Florida International REU program in gravitational-wave physics. See INSIDE CSUF, and CSUF Physics Page.
- Thomas Abbott travels to the LIGO Livingston Observatory for three weeks to work on characterization of the Advanced LIGO Data Acquisition System.
May 2011:- Chris Griffo travels to the Gravitational Wave Astronomy Summer School on South Padre Island Texas, see here.
- Undergraduates Fabian Magaña-Sandoval and Robert Wright join the CSUF gravitational wave group.
March 2011:- Gravitational-wave group featured in California State University's Science and the CSU.
February 2011:- Masters student Chris Griffo joins the group to work on astronomical image analysis.
January 2011:- The CSUF gravitational-wave group and students Chris Francis, Thomas Abbott and Cinthia Padilla featured in this INSIDE article.
December 2010:- The CSUF gravitational-wave group featured in an OC register science article.
October 2010:- Chris Francis completed his MS project entitled, "Measuring scattered light from Advanced LIGO optics", with a presentation in the department colloquium.
September 2010:- The CSUF gravitational wave group is awarded $240,000 for research from the NSF grant " RUI: LIGO Detector Characterization and Optical Scatter Research". More details on the NSF website.
August 2010:- Undergraduate Wyatt Kiedrowski joins the group to work on the experimental measurement of scattered light from beam dumps and diffractive optics.
- Undergraduate Cinthia Padilla joins the group and begins a project to help develop software to analyze telescope images from the LOOCUP project.
- Master's student Brian Kuper joins the group and begins a project to measure scattered light from Advanced LIGO and third generation GW detector optics.
July 2010:- The CSUF gravitational wave group is awarded $35,000 for research from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement for the Cottrell College Science Award, "Extending the astronomical reach of gravitational-wave detectors with all-reflective interferometry". Read more on the Research Corporation Website, and in the 2010 Annual Report.
June 2010:- Undergraduate Jackie Lee joins the group to work on the search for gravitational-wave bursts.
- Philip Macias leaves to take on a SURF project at SDSU. There he will work with Dr. Jerome Orosz on optical and infrared observations of the black hole x-ray binary GRS 1009-45.
April 2010:- Skye Harris, an undergraduate at Citrus College, will be doing a summer REU with the GWG. His project will focus on LIGO detector characterization.
March 2010:- Thomas Abbott joins the GWG and starts a project on vetoes for false gravitational-wave candidates based on environmental sensors.
February 2010:- Undergraduate Philip Macias joins the GWG to work on an astrophysics project: image analysis of electromagnetic followup of test gravitational-wave triggers.
- Master's student Chris Francis joins the GWG to work on scattered light measurements, and aspects of the LIGO noise budget.
January 2010:Smith joins the physics faculty at CSUF, link.