Detection of Gravitational Waves

Vaibhav uday rane

Department of humanities and sciences
Thakur college of engineering and technology
Kandivali east,Mumbai-400,001
Vaibhav.rane.16113@gmail.com
Abstract
Detection of gravitational waves is more like hearing rather than seeing, And LIGO is providing
an ear to hear the story behind every gravitational waves. Laser Interferometer Gravitational- wave
Observatory(LIGO) is basically a widely spread observatory in US from Hanford to Livingston. It consists
of two 4 km long arm to detect the variations produce by waves more precisely. Laser emits the light
which passes through two perpendicular pipes which gets reflected by the mirror adjusted at other end
of pipes and this reflected ray makes an interference pattern which is detected by the photo detector.
when gravitational waves arrives , one arm get stretched and other get compress so that an interference
pattern get observed at photo detector. gravitational waves coming from merging of two black holes
were detected by LIGO on 24th September, 2015 which were predicted by Einstein before 100 years.
With LIGO we can hear the gravitational waves coming from early universe or even the big bang and
gain a better knowledge of how universe being created. It’s a completely new way to discover the things
that we don’t know yet.

keywords
. Laser Interferometer Gravitational- wave Observatory(LIGO) , gravitational waves , spacetime,
neutron star, hydron collider, dark matter
Introduction
The waves which are produced violent events in space such as merging of two black holes or
collision of stars, etc and causes the distortion in fabric of spacetime are called as gravitational waves.
Spacetime is 4 dimentional thing which refers time as an one dimension in addition to the three well
known dimensions. basically the gravitational waves are the ripples produced just like the ripples
produce after the drop falls on steady surface of water. these waves compresses or stretches the
spacetime fabric in order to create distortion. LIGO is a huge observatory having one arm directed
towards Hanford and other which is perpendicular and directed towards Livingston. This place is away
from the noisy places such as airports, railway stations, highways,etc. to eliminate the all noise. Both
arms are 4 km long in order to detect the the gravitational waves more precisely. A laser is being used
which emits a light of single wavelength constantly and continuously. laser possesses a constant
wavelength of 1064nm. power of this laser is about 1MW. A lens is adjusted before the laser in order to
divide the incident light into two parts to travel along the perpendicular pipes. One end of both pipes
kept open to transmit the light through them whereas other ends are covered with smoothest mirrors
(each of 40kg) ever created by suspended silicon thread just twice the thickness of hair to isolate them
from the outer environment . photo detector plays a very important role. It gives the interference
pattern created by reflected rays so that we can detect the presence of the gravitational waves. Even
the light of constant wavelength not going to give you the real variations due to the gravitational waves.
It’s necessary to pumped down the inner atmospheric pressure to one trillionth of atmospheric pressure
as well as to heat the pipes vigorously for the elimination of residual gases in order to avoid all the
obstacles faced by light while travelling through the pipes. It takes 40 days pumped down the
atmospheric pressure. This processes makes it the second largest vacuum in world after a hydron
collider.
Take a piece of torn balloon. when you stretches it in one direction(let say along y-axis) , it get
compress in other direction (along x-axis); in the same way when gravitational waves stretches the
space in one direction , simultaneously it will get compress in other direction. It’s a slow stretching. the
gravitational waves stretches or compresses the space 100 times per second. As the gravitational waves
are consequence of mass , the mass will definitely get affected by these waves. so the length of pipes
going to change very slightly. Even the light gets affected by gravitational waves. So the light will also get
stretched along with pipe which is getting stretched and it will get compress along with the pipe which is
getting compressed. The light which gets stretched doesn’t used for work of measurement. As I before
said there’s a continuous transmission of light , fresh light of same wavelength send through the pipe to
measure distortion produce by light.
Adjustment is done so that the reflected rays coming from both arms remain out of phase in
absence of gravitational waves. As a result no light get detected by photo detector. when gravitational
waves arrives , they start to produce distortion is space. So the light has to travel more distance through
the pipe which will get stretched and it has to travel a less distance from original distance through the
pipe which will get compressed. As a result both will arrive at different instant after getting reflected by
the mirrors , and finally we get the lights with less out of phase which leads to the detection of
interference pattern at photo detector. This detector is able to measure the variation of about 10^-18
m. at the end they get variation of about 1 part in 100 billionth of trillionth. It means 10^21 m can be
shrunk by just 5mm. you will say the whole thing is bogus , even the noise can produce the moment of
mirrors which may lead to the similar effects as the gravitational waves signal. So to reduce the noise
Observer compare the signals from both sites. They are not taking taking this tremendous amount of
effort s to measure one thing or two things. Basically it is made to measure how much one arm get
stretched from the other one.
LIGO detected the first real gravitational waves successfully, produced before 1.3 billion
years ago due to black holes on 24 September 2015 as predicted by the Einstein’s theory of general
relativity. Recently in 2017, the physicists who were working with LIGO (Rainer weiss, Barry C. Barish and
kip S. Thorne) received a nobel prize for their great contribution.
Diagrams:-

My idea
Body
If we made a spiral path to detect the variation in space caused by gravitational waves , it will give us
more precise result at the end. In LIGO just the single rod was getting stretched. but as u can see in the
diagram ,due to the spiral path; stretching occurs at each and every curve which is in the direction of
gravitational waves. here as u increases the number of turns in spiral path , equal number of parts will
get stretched resulting in the good outcome. We can use transmitter receiver system by keeping
transmitter at the entrance of spiral path and receiver at centre of this spiral path to measure variation
due to the gravitational waves. even we can keep both transmitter and receiver at the entrance and a
reflecting material at centre so the transmitted signal needs to travel the spiral path twice. as
gravitational waves(detected in 2015) took 0.01 s to stretch the space once . so by keeping this in mind,
light is one only thing which is going to give u an expected output as its speed is 3x10^8m/s. Even
there’s a possibility of permanent change caused by gravitational waves , so in this case even we can use
some wire or other kind of solid thing along the each curve of spiral path to detect the variation.
Advantages
1) Verification of some predictions of general theory of relativity
2) Gravitational waves have different characteristics than electromagnetic waves, like light and
radio waves. So the gravitational wave observations provide an additional way to understand
astronomical and astrophysics events and bodies
3) If we see the universe with visible light , it’s no longer transparent; it’s opaque. But with LIGO
we can listen the gravitational waves coming from early universe and gain better knowledge
about formation of universe.
Further work and future scope
1) with the help of gravitational waves we will able to see where the general relativity theory
fails

2) when gravitational waves coming from collision between Neutron stars is being detected by
LIGO, we can set our traditional telescopes at them to watch light show because we never
before able to measure an object in terms of both gravity and radiation.

3) Gravitational waves can be help us to find the origins of Dark matter

4) LIGO-India or INDIGO is a collaborative project between LIGO laboratory and Indian initiative
in gravitational wave observations to create world class gravitational-wave detector in India.
This project is located at Hingoli district ( in western India )

Conclusion
Gravitational waves offers a remarkable opportunity to see the universe from a new perspective. they
are really at the beginning of this field but it’s a completely new way to come to know about the things
that we don’t know yet. As they get more and more detection, they are going to probe Einstein’s theory
of general relativity even deeper and may be expose the holes in it.

References
A) youtube

1) A video on gravitational waves by pilled higher and deeper (PHD comics)

2) A video of TED-Ed on what are gravitational waves by Amber L. Stuver

3) A video by veritasium on the absurdity of detecting gravitational waves

4) A video by TED on what the discovery of gravitational waves means by Allan Adams

B) www.quora.com

C) Physics.stackexchange.com

D) www.space.com

E) LIGO- Wikipedia

F) www.ligo.org

G) gravitational waves- wikipedia