My experience as a VSP Student at IUCAA Pune: Securing an Internship at LIGO-India
This is my first blog, and I will be sharing my experience as I work as a research intern under the Vacation Students Program of IUCAA Pune. I am not sure about the length of the blog, but I will try to keep it crisp and sweet. So, please bear with me.
Working as a research intern in physical mode, being the COVID-19 Batch, was my first on-site internship experience. I joined the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) Pune under Vacations Students Program on 29th May. In my seven weeks of on-site internship, I will be working on a project associated with LIGO-India.
LIGO-India is part of an international collaboration to detect gravitational waves. This is also famously known as INDIGO or Indian Initiative in Gravitational Wave Observations. The experiment has got the Cabinet approval and techniques are under construction to build up the instrumentation and test them.
The primary concept of the experiment to detect gravitational waves is based on Michaelson Interferometers. For those of you who don’t know, let me take a moment to explain how the process works. A laser beam is subjected to a beam splitter that splits the beam into two parts that are in a 180-degree phase shift. The two beams travel their path, hit the mirror, and continue their journey to merge. In case of no gravitational waves, dark spots on the screen will be detected. But in the case of the presence of gravitational waves, the two light beams do not cancel each other out and some light is detected!
This is because gravitational waves stretch and squeeze space-time. If you want to learn more about gravitational wave detectors, I am attaching the link to CalTech blogs and a YouTube video with a much more detailed explanation.
Link to CalTech blogs — https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/learn-more
Link to YouTube video explanation — https://youtu.be/trQNpZHL8KM
Now you may ask, how did I get the opportunity to work on such an amazing government project? Well, I tried being a part of the CalTech SURF program, but my application got rejected. And one day, while scrolling through LinkedIn, I saw someone’s gratitude post as he gets the opportunity to work on the LIGO-India project. I tried contacting them using LinkedIn messages. I send him my resume and asked for projects. After looking at my resume, he gave me the contact details of the Scientific Officer leading the LIGO-India group at IUCAA.
It took me a whole lot of courage to directly e-mail the Scientific Officer but after iterating my e-mail multiple times and curating a whole new and specific resume, I finally mailed him asking for opportunities to work on the project. We shared conversations, and after I guess 7–8 e-mails, I got a chance to be a part of this project under the Vacations Students Program by IUCAA.
Well, now some introduction about my project. I will share the details in my later blogs. (Ps. looking at the length of the blog, I must stop!) My project is to thermally calibrate low-frequency seismic sensors for gravitational wave detectors. If you have gone through the blogs and/or videos, you must know the importance of seismic sensors in gravitational wave detectors. If you don’t know, well, gravitational wave detectors are highly sensitive. Sensitive enough to detect the size of the measurement 1/10000th part of a proton. And this sensitivity comes with a disadvantage, that it can easily detect ground motions such as traffic, or earthquakes. To avoid these, LIGO uses a series of active and passive seismic isolation systems. These consist of seismic sensors that may change their output to temperature effects, and to avoid that thermal calibration is required. Meaning, no matter the outer temperature or pressure, the output of the seismic sensors is always reliable!
Well, during my first week, I read about seismic waves, basic seismometers (seismic sensors), their application in LIGO detectors, and the aLIGO project. I and my supervisor discussed multiple techniques of seismic isolation and the technique currently in implication by LIGO-India.
Apart from the regular work, what I primarily enjoy about the internship is the vibe. People here are interested in listening to what you do, they help you if you are stuck somewhere, and they enjoy the discussions either on their primary working domain or in a general sense, like social issues. People here welcome you and your research interests.
Taking rest for the time being. I will post a blog sooner about my progress.
