A new kind of gravitational wave hunter is set to start up in 2023, and it could also help in the search for dark matter.
Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time created by events such as black holes colliding. They were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 and first detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US in 2015, almost a century later. Now, we have seen more than 100 gravitational waves, advancing our understanding of black holes and neutron stars.
But there is still much more to discover. The Matter-wave Laser Interferometric Gravitation Antenna (MIGA) in France is designed to spot low-frequency gravitational waves that existing detectors can’t see. Astronomers are keen to find these waves because they could carry hints of how pairs of black holes behave long before they collide.
Located 300 metres underground in a former military facility, MIGA is a 150-metre-long tube with all the air sucked out to create a near-perfect vacuum. While LIGO uses two beams of light as detectors, looking for disturbances in space-time created by passing gravitational waves that make the beams differ from each other, MIGA use rubidium atoms chilled with lasers to just 2 millionths of a degree above absolute zero.
At this temperature, quantum effects turn the atoms into “matter waves” that can be used in a similar manner to LIGO’s light beams, but with far more sensitivity. LIGO can’t detect particularly low-frequency gravitational waves because they get mixed up with tiny seismic vibrations, but MIGA’s matter waves – which are in near-total isolation underground and are in a vacuum – can.
“The dream of gravitational wave astronomy is to be able to cover all frequencies of gravitational waves. If we can go from very low to very high frequencies, we may even discover sources of gravitational waves we don’t expect yet,” says MIGA project manager Benjamin Canuel.
In addition to detecting new gravitational waves, the researchers hope to use MIGA’s sensitivity to faint disturbances to look for interactions between the rubidium atoms and possible dark matter particles, says Dylan Sabulsky at the Low Noise Underground Laboratory in France. Dark matter is thought to make up the bulk of matter in the universe, but we have never detected it directly. MIGA could put new constraints on the mass or energy of dark particles, he says.
Errara t1_j2iebvj wrote
Reply to MIGA: Gravitational wave hunters will get an ultracool new tool in 2023 by cciccitrixx
Blocked by paywall, here's the article:
A new kind of gravitational wave hunter is set to start up in 2023, and it could also help in the search for dark matter.
Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time created by events such as black holes colliding. They were first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 and first detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US in 2015, almost a century later. Now, we have seen more than 100 gravitational waves, advancing our understanding of black holes and neutron stars.
But there is still much more to discover. The Matter-wave Laser Interferometric Gravitation Antenna (MIGA) in France is designed to spot low-frequency gravitational waves that existing detectors can’t see. Astronomers are keen to find these waves because they could carry hints of how pairs of black holes behave long before they collide.
Located 300 metres underground in a former military facility, MIGA is a 150-metre-long tube with all the air sucked out to create a near-perfect vacuum. While LIGO uses two beams of light as detectors, looking for disturbances in space-time created by passing gravitational waves that make the beams differ from each other, MIGA use rubidium atoms chilled with lasers to just 2 millionths of a degree above absolute zero.
At this temperature, quantum effects turn the atoms into “matter waves” that can be used in a similar manner to LIGO’s light beams, but with far more sensitivity. LIGO can’t detect particularly low-frequency gravitational waves because they get mixed up with tiny seismic vibrations, but MIGA’s matter waves – which are in near-total isolation underground and are in a vacuum – can.
“The dream of gravitational wave astronomy is to be able to cover all frequencies of gravitational waves. If we can go from very low to very high frequencies, we may even discover sources of gravitational waves we don’t expect yet,” says MIGA project manager Benjamin Canuel.
In addition to detecting new gravitational waves, the researchers hope to use MIGA’s sensitivity to faint disturbances to look for interactions between the rubidium atoms and possible dark matter particles, says Dylan Sabulsky at the Low Noise Underground Laboratory in France. Dark matter is thought to make up the bulk of matter in the universe, but we have never detected it directly. MIGA could put new constraints on the mass or energy of dark particles, he says.