Gravitational wave physics and Astrophysics Laboratory

Welcome to the Laboratory of observational Gravitational Wave Physics and Astrophysics, Osaka Metropolitan University. Using gravitational waves, the new window to the universe,  we study physics and astrophysics. We are involved with the Japanese gravitational wave telescope project, KAGRA, namely, the KAGRA data management and calibration as well as data analysis.

Gravitational waves are efficiently emitted by rapidly moving heavy and compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars that are gravitationally interacting with each other. As a result, gravitational waves carry information on such astronomical objects, even theory of gravitation. In September 2015, two LIGO gravitational wave telescopes, built in Hanford Washington and Livingston Louisiana, USA, detected gravitational waves from the coalescence of two black holes where the mass of each component is approximately 30 solar masses. LIGO and Virgo, the European gravitational wave detector, have announced a hundred of discoveries of astronomical gravitational wave signals since then. On 17 August 2017, LIGO and Virgo jointly detected a gravitational wave signal, called GW170817, due to a binary neutron star coalescence.

The twentieth century has seen evolutions in our understanding of the universe through new windows into the universe: Radio, Infrared, X-ray, and Gamma-ray astronomy. Discoveries include the cosmic microwave background, pulsars, quasars, super-massive black holes in the cores of galaxies, stellar evolution, exoplanets, inter-galactic plasma, gamma-ray bursts, and neutrino oscillation. Likewise, we can expect an evolution in our views on the universe through the new window, gravitational waves astronomy. KAGRA is expected to contribute the international network of gravitational wave observatories and thereby opens up an emerging new field, gravitational wave astronomy.