This gravitational analog to electromagnetic radiation has never been directly detected. Detectors must be sensitive to changes in length on the order of one-thousandth the radius of a proton. LIGO is designed to detect gravitational radiation with enough sensitivity such that astrophysical research can be done based solely on gravitational radiation. Existing data analysis programs written specifically for the purpose of analyzing gravitational radiation data have been merged with a professionally developed problem-solving environment. The GUI can read data from URLs or local disks.
Visualization is provided via graphics and audio playback.
The push of a button produces time and frequency domain plots while more advanced applications include simulations of compact binary inspirals or chirps and optimal filter based searches for such systems. Data can also be viewed in a three dimensional template space that displays the output of a grid of matched filters. It provides a very user-friendly virtual laboratory and allows the users to perform various computer experiments to test interferometer performance. The principle objective of this project was to validate some optical parts of this program. I spent my summer in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory 40 Meter Lab studying ways to more accurately measure the power of the laser sidebands.