Graduate Research
Dauren Dossymbek
Title: "Detection of Gravitational Waves from Core Collapse Supernovae in Interferometric Data"
Mentor: Dr. Soma Mukherjee
Gravitational waves are oscillations of the geometric structure of spacetime (metric) which propagate in space with the speed of light. Their existence was predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity one hundred years ago. For the past 20 years, tremendous efforts have been made in order to detect gravitational wave experimentally. These efforts were led by the US LIGO Project (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) which is conducting observations of the Universe since 2005. After a decade of hard work, gravitational waves were finally discovered by LIGO. This event was announced at the press conference of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration in Washington DC on February 11, 2016.
It should be noted that the main astrophysical sources of gravitational waves are coalescent binary neutron stars and binary black holes. These systems consist of two massive stellar objects that orbit each other around a common center of mass. Due to the large distance to the source the signal that is coming from such systems is very weak. The main goal of our research project is to develop a method for detection of a weak gravitational wave signals in the presence of noise. To understand the performance of our model we are using simulated Gaussian noise.