An illustration of a space based and land based Gravitational-Wave detector

India’s S&T landscape will reap significant gains in quantum-sensing and metrology, Tarun Souradeep said

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a project to build an advanced gravitational-wave detector in Maharashtra at an estimated cost of Rs 2,600 crore. The facility’s construction is expected to be completed by 2030.

By building it, “Indian S&T will leap-frog in a number of cutting-edge frontiers of great national relevance, in particular quantum-sensing and metrology,” Tarun Souradeep, director of the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, and former spokesperson (science) of LIGO-India, told The Hindu.

According to Union minister Jitendra Singh, it will come up in Hingoli district, where land has been acquired to the tune of 174 acres.

The observatory will be the third of its kind, made to the exact specifications of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories (LIGO), in Louisiana and Washington in the U.S. LIGO-India will work in tandem with them.

The project is a collaboration between a consortium of Indian research institutions and the U.S. observatories, plus several international partners.

The Indian government had approved the project in principle in February 2016. The project proponents have since selected a site for the detector, which needs to be flat and free of seismic disturbances; characterising it; and planning the observatory.

The LIGO is a giant L-shaped instrument. Each arm of the ‘L’ is 4 km long. Two laser pulses are shot through each arm at the same time, and they bounce off a mirror at the end to return to the vertex. A detector checks whether the pulses return at the same time.

When a gravitational wave passes through the detector, the pulses are slightly out of time. Researchers use this and other signals to detect, record, and study gravitational waves.

The properties of merging black holes can be calculated from the initial part of the signal waveform. Representative image.

The properties of merging black holes can be calculated from the initial part of the signal waveform. Representative image. | Photo Credit: LIGO

Gravitational waves are emitted by very massive objects in the universe in extreme environments, such as when black holes collide. Just as light emitted by an object can be used to probe its electromagnetic properties, gravitational waves can be used to probe the gravitational features of the source.

While two LIGOs can study gravitational waves, a third observatory is required to better triangulate the location of a source in the sky. A more ideal setup requires four observatories to record the same wave. To this end, researchers are setting up and upgrading detectors in Italy and Japan.

LIGO-India will be built by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, with a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. National Science Foundation and several national and international research institutions. The U.S. will provide key components for the lab worth around Rs 560 crore.

“The LIGO-India Observatory will enable the dramatic astronomy and astrophysics returns eagerly anticipated from the global network of LIGO Gravitational wave detectors in the coming decade,” Dr. Souradeep said.

The Union Cabinet approved a project to build an advanced gravitational-wave detector in Maharashtra at an estimated cost of Rs 2,600 crore. The facility’s construction is expected to be completed by 2030.

The observatory will be the third of its kind, made to the exact specifications of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories (LIGO), in Louisiana and Washington in the U.S. LIGO-India will work in tandem with them.

The project is a collaboration between a consortium of Indian research institutions and the U.S. observatories, plus several international partners.