The Detection of Gravitational Waves
This talk reviews the challenges involved in the detection of gravitational waves, a topic of theoretical and experimental research at many of the world’s leading universities. Described, from an engineering perspective, are the objectives, a brief history, the mechanisms of detection, technical antenna and signal extraction challenges and current technology in resonant bar, spacecraft doppler shift, and laser interferometer designs. And most importantly, the recent first ever detection by LIGO of gravitational waves (from coalescing black holes) will also be discussed.
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- Fairleigh Dickinson University
- Teaneck, New Jersey
- United States 07666
- Building: Auditorium M105, Muscarelle Center
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Hong Zhao (201)-692-2350, zhao@fdu.edu; Alfredo Tan, tan@fdu.edu, Howard Leach h.leach@ieee.org
- Co-sponsored by SP01 and School of Computer Sciences and Engineering, FDU
- Starts 19 February 2016 04:00 PM UTC
- Ends 10 March 2016 06:00 PM UTC
- No Admission Charge
Agenda
Mr. Lewis’ independent research area for the last 23 years has been the search for gravitational waves, with numerous publications and conference presentations on the topic to his credit. His background as an electronics engineer includes 37 years full-time experience designing circuits and systems, including sophisticated instrumentation, in the defense industry (BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin Fairchild Systems, Loral Electronic Systems). He also worked at American Optical Company in their laser research lab. He has a BSEE degree from Fairleigh Dickinson Univ. (1961), and an MS (in Electrical Engineering) from Columbia Univ. He has been teaching full time at FDU for 15 years. He’s also an Assoc. Director of the School of Computer Sciences and Engineering. His courses (relevant to this seminar topic) include Electromagnetic Fields and Waves (undergrad.) and Optics (graduate). He is a senior life member of the IEEE, a former chair of the North Jersey Section, a former governor of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He is a member of the AOC (an electronic countermeasures engineering society), the AAAS and AIP/APS (he’s been a member of the Topical Group on Gravitation since its inception decades ago). He participated (in a minor way) at committee level on the early development of LIGO. He has a patent in electro-optics. He has authored ten engineering articles, including three on the GW topic. One Gravitational Wave (GW) article was for IEEE Spectrum, and one for IEEE Antennas and Propagation magazine. He has also presented several GW related papers at physics and engineering conferences, and given talks on the topic at IEEE meetings at Stevens, NJIT, Fordham, and Princeton.