Michele Zanolin Ph.D.

- Search for gravitational wave bursts from optical supernovae. When a sufficiently massive star dies, it can result in a massive explosion called a supernova. For decades we have been able to see the electromagnetic results of these explosions, but now, with the help of the data from interferometers, we hope to generate evidence for the gravitational waves emitted by these explosions and understand better their physical mechanism. We are developing an alghorithm that allows one to analyze weeks of interferometer data around the recorded time of the supernova optical signatures. The tool is to modify an existing algorithm currently used for all-sky searches of un-modelled GW transients, Coherent Waveburst. This code combines the signals from different interferomenters in a coherent way. We are customizing it to only be sensitive to signals from directions consistent with the supernova location, and track that location during deveral sideereal days. This approach is motivated by the desire to increase the sensitivity and solve one of the problems in observing GWs from optical supernovae: the large uncertainty in the exact time of emission of the GWs. The observed optical signal is not usually the beginning of the supernova light curve which might not be the exact time of emission of the gravitational wave. More explictly, if the mechanism that generates these waves is the acoustic bounce of the expanding gasses off the solid core it can reinitialize the fusion process and the visible explosion. This bounce occurs within seconds of the explosion, but because of the significant turmoil of these explosions, it can take up to a day for the first electromagnetic signals to escape the explosion. Then the fact that the first EM emissions are rarely observed directly can increase the time uncertainty to weeks. In this search weanalyze supernova events recorded by astronomers during the S6 data run. The current research page can be found in Research student Lex Corpuz's Page. . - Another ongoing activity to improve the detection of gravitational wave transients (GWT) is the development of distributional tests methodologies for the detection of GWT.

Measurement of the Young modulus of the coatings of LIGO mirrors. At present, the value of the Young's modulus is probably the least well known parameter determining the Brownian thermal noise of the AdLIGO baseline coatings. Since thermal noise dominates the most sensitive Advanced Ligo Band our lack of knowledge about the Young's modulus is probably the dominant uncertainty in our projections of the Advanced LIGO range. Also, for coating development beyond the initial implementation of Advanced LIGO, the Young's modulus must be measured directly to properly compare different test-coatings. Embry-Riddle is involved in an NSF-funded effort to develop coatings for use in future detector upgrades. setup , pulses

Jessica Watts (measurement of Young's modulus in the coating of LIGO mirrors). This research is done in collaboration with the group of professor A. Greatarsson at ERAU and Ira Gwyant and Prof Kabub at Stanford University.

Ian Simpson direction reconstruction of Gravitational wave transients with time delays and Ian's senior thesis