Dr H Ward, Dr E Fitzsimons
Applications accepted all year round
Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
This research studentship, aiming to develop technology for space-based detection of gravitational waves, is for collaborative research between UK-ATC (National centre for astronomical technology), the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow and the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Sensing and Measurement.
LISA – the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna – will be the European Space Agency’s third Large-class mission in its Cosmic Vision program and will become the world’s first ever space-based gravitational wave observatory. High sensitivity displacement measurement by optical laser interferometry lies at the very heart of the LISA mission, performed with a resolution of ~10 picometres over multi-gigametre baselines between separate spacecraft. These requirements are challenging, but through a mixture of ground and space-based tests the field is already far advanced in demonstrating their feasibility. In particular, the University of Glasgow (UGL) optical bench (OB) operating in the precursor technology demonstrator mission, LISA Pathfinder, has shown outstanding displacement metrology performance, that is well below that required for the intra-spacecraft measurements in LISA.
The UK Space Agency recently completed a competitive evaluation of proposed nationally funded contributions to L3. This resulted in agreement in principle to fund the optical bench subsystems, capitalising on the Glasgow success in the LISA Pathfinder mission. However the optical bench subsystem for L3 is a major undertaking, with significant increase in technical complexity compared with the OB developed for LISA Pathfinder, but a major increase also in number of payload items to be built. In light of the need for significant up-scaling of capacity, UGL and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK-ATC) in Edinburgh have agreed to form a teaming arrangement, with in the short to medium term, scientific oversight and underpinning technology developments remaining primarily the province of UGL, with OB design and simulation, and ultimately building, testing and delivery of flight hardware being the prime responsibility of UK-ATC.
The research project will focus on developing various techniques which are essential for the development of the overall LISA optical system. Key topics include: development of analysis methods to determine the impact of stray light on the science measurement; investigations into the design and development of ultra-stable laser beam fibre couplers, and other optical systems, suitable for LISA; and development of alignment and displacement sensors and techniques which are capable of achieving the ultra-high precision required for the build and operation of the LISA optical metrology system.
This project is available for an early start.