Gravity and astrophysics at UMiss

The LIGO Lab established an internal deadline of March 31, 2012 for making our final decision on whether or not to recommend to the NSF to proceed to minimize the impact the Advanced LIGO schedule.  Over the past 9 months, we have been conducting a thorough evaluation of LIGO-India.  We have worked closely with our Indian colleagues to plan LIGO-India.  Over the past 9 months, various senior members of the Lab have made 5 ‘scouting trips’ to India to visit laboratories and institutes and hold technical discussions with Indian scientists and engineers. We’ve met with Indian funding agency representatives to assess LIGO-India’s chances of being funded as well as held discussions with Lab Directors on how the LIGO-India Project would be organized. We have also engaged the NSF in discussions to determine how to proceed in the eventuality that we wished to recommend going forward. The NSF has held two preliminary peer reviews of our concept, both of which have endorsed the proposal to site one of our Hanford instruments in India.

To enable a clear decision process, the Lab formulated a set of key criteria that would have to be met by March 31 in order for us to make a strong positive recommendation to proceed. These criteria include a guarantee of funding, identification of the Indian institutes that will lead the Project (the counterparts to Caltech and MIT), identification of candidates for the LIGO-India Director, identification and preliminary vetting of at least two viable sites for LIGO-India, and agreement on both the US and Indian sides on the terms of an MOU that will define the responsibilities and obligations on each side.  Only if all criteria were met would we recommend going forward.

Jay Marx, Fred Raab, David Shoemaker, Stan Whitcomb and I visited India in late February and early March to evaluate whether the decision criteria have been met.  Our assessment is that all criteria will either have been met or are essentially guaranteed of being met.  During 2012 - 2016, funding will be provided for site acquisition, observatory and vacuum system construction, with funding for commissioning and operations coming in 2017-2026.  Included in this are funds for training Indian scientists engineers at LIGO institutions.  Three Indian Institutes […] will lead the LIGO-India project on the Indian side.  Each has strengths in key areas necessary for LIGO-India to succeed. A LIGO-India Director candidate has been identified.  Eight locations have been potentially identified as possible LIGO-India sites.  Finally, an MOU between the US and Indian sides has been drafted and agreed to by both sides.  Taken together, these provide us with confidence that LIGO-India will succeed.

The LIGO Lab Executive Committee very recently met to consider LIGO-India, and there is a broad, strong consensus to move forward. We’ve also met with the LIGO Laboratory Oversight Committee, and they ‘unanimously and enthusiastically endorse’ the LIGO-India Project.  Before LIGO-India becomes official, NSF will have to review our recommendation and approve it.  NSF will hold a final review of LIGO-India in mid-April and we expect to hear their decision in early May.  In addition, the Advanced LIGO Project held a Technical Review Board to determine which Hanford instrument we would send to India if we made the decision to move forward. Their recommendation was to send the H2 components to India, implemented as a straight interferometer to mimic the US aLIGO instruments.