CMI Silver Jubilee Lecture

Bala R Iyer, ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore

LIGO-India: Towards Multi-messenger Astronomy

Monday, March 2, 2015

Abstract:

The upcoming Gravitational Wave (GW) detectors Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will be operational in a few years and are expected to make several detections per year. The first detections will lead to a fundamentally new observational window to the Universe with implications for astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics. The anticipated multi-messenger astronomy requires extension of the existing LIGO-Virgo network to a global network including observatories like LIGO-India to provide good sky localization for the GW sources. LIGO-India will thus play a critical role in locating and deciphering these sources. The status of LIGO-India project and the exciting research opportunities – arising from this international facility on Indian soil – in a variety of disciplines in basic science, high end technology and challenges in computations will be finally indicated.