Journal article
Continuous gravitational waves in the lab: Recovering audio signals with a table-top optical microphone
JW Gardner, H Middleton, C Liu, A Melatos, R Evans, W Moran, D Beniwal, HT Cao, C Ingram, D Brown, S Ng
American Journal of Physics | Published : 2022
DOI: 10.1119/10.0009409
Abstract
Gravitational-wave observatories around the world are searching for continuous waves: persistent signals from sources, such as spinning neutron stars. These searches use sophisticated statistical techniques to look for weak signals in noisy data. In this paper, we demonstrate these techniques using a table-top model gravitational-wave detector: a Michelson interferometer where sound is used as an analog for gravitational waves. Using signal processing techniques from continuous-wave searches, we demonstrate the recovery of tones with constant and wandering frequencies. We also explore the use of the interferometer as a teaching tool for educators in physics and electrical engineering by usin..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Jude Prezens, Alex Tolotchkoc, and Blake Molyneux for their technical advice and generous assistance; Patrick Meyers, Margaret Millhouse, Sofia Suvorova for useful discussions; Patrick Clearwater, Patrick Meyers, Suk Yee Yong, Lucy Strang, Julian Carlin, Sanjaykumar Patil, and Alex Cameron for early work on the interferometer design requirements and construction; and the LIGO Education Public Outreach working group, in particular, Anna Green, Lynn Cominsky, Sam Cooper, and Martin Hendry, for their helpful feedback and suggestions. Figure 1 was made using graphics from ComponentLibrary by Alexander Franzen, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. This research is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) (Project No. CE170100004). Financial support toward hardware was provided by the Institute of Physics International Member Grant and the OzGrav Outreach Support scheme. Travel support was provided by the Australian National University PhB Science program. This work has been assigned LIGO Document No. P2000386.