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Bangalore Sathyaprakash

Professor Bangalore Sathyaprakash

Gravity Exploration Institute

School of Physics and Astronomy

Email
SathyaprakashBS@cardiff.ac.uk

Overview

I am currently employed at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, where I am the Bert Elsbach Professor of Physics and Professor of  Astronomy and Astrophysics. I am affiliated with the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University and I am a member of the School's Gravity Exploration Institute.

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  • Sathyaprakash, B. S. et al. 2011. Scientific potential of Einstein Telescope. Presented at: Rencontres de Moriond, Gravitational Waves and Experimental Gravity, La Thuile, Italy, 3-10 March 2012 Presented at Auge, E., Dumarchez, J. and Tran Thanh Van, J. eds.Proceedings of the 47th Rencontres de Moriond, Gravitational Waves and Experimental Gravity, La Thuile, Italy, 3-10 March 2012. Vietnam: The Gioi Publishers

Erthyglau

Llyfrau

Monograffau

Research

Research interests

My research interests at different times have focussed on cosmology, large-scale structure, classical field theory and symmetry breaking. For a good part of the past two decades I have done most of my research on  sources of gravitational waves and their detection, culminating in the first direct observation of gravitational waves on September 14, 2015.  Matched filtering search algorithms that I designed in 1990s were crticial in the first detection of gravitational waves and are routinely used to identify gravitational waves from merging black hole and neutron star binaries. I also proposed new tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity that formed the backbone of a series of LIGO-Virgo papers on the subject.

Supervision

My research group is engaged in the analysis of data from the American LIGO and European Virgo laser interferometer gravitational-wave detectors, mainly concerned with the searches for coalescences of compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes. My students and postdocs work on exploting gravitatioanl-wave observations to gain new insights into the nature of extreme gravity and black holes, property of ultra dense matter in cores of neutron stars, the nature of dark matter and dark energy and the formation and evolution of compact binaries in the Universe. 

Teaching

I am currently a part-time research professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy. As such I do not teach any graduate or undergraduate courses. In the past I have taught the following courses:

  1. PX1214: Dynamics and Relativity (since 2007)
  2. PX3121: Applications of Quantum Mechanics (since 2005)
  3. PX4114: General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics (1996-2001, 2006)
  4. Px3211: Advanced Mathematical Physics (1997-2005)

Biography

I obtained my first degree from Bangalore University in 1979, masters in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1981 and my PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1987. Before moving to Cardiff in 1996,  I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune (1989-91) and International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy (1991-1992) and on the faculty of IUCAA (1993-1995). I was awarded a personal chair by Cardiff University in 2003. I am currently the Bert Elsbach Professor of Physics and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Pennsylvania State University and the Associate Director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. I remain affiliated with the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University and am a member of the Gravity Exploration Institute.

Honours and awards

I have been involved in the study to design a third generation gravitational wave detector called the Einstein Gravitational Wave Telescope (or ET) that is able to observe binary black hole coalescences at cosmological distances - a probe that will uncover the secrets of the Universe using a new window and thereby confirm or rule out current paradigms in cosmology such as dark energy and dark matter. Moreover, this project will be crucial to testing general relativity in the strongly non-linear regime of the theory, something which no solar-system experiment or radio binary pulsar observation will ever be able to do.

I was co-opted by the Gravitational Wave International Committee (a subcommittee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) to develop a Road Map for Gravitational Wave Astronomy with a 30 year horizon.

Project leadership

  1. Member of the GEO 600 Executive Committee (since 1998)
  2. Member of the LIGO Governing Council (since 1998)
  3. Member of the Executive Board of the European ILIAS collaboration (since Jan 2004)

Invited papers at international conferences

I have given over 20 plenary talks at international conferences and conferences in the past five years. Please visit my home page for a complete list.

  1. Testing post-Newtonian theory with gravitational wave observations, Einstein Woche, September 26-29 2005, Jena.
  2. Astronomical and Cosmological Sources of Gravitational Waves, Frontier Science, Rome, Italy, June 14-18, 2004.
  3. Gravitational Radiation: Observing the dark and dense Universe, International Cosmic Ray Conference 2003 (ICRC2003), July 31-Aug 7, Tsukuba, Japan
  4. Much Ado About Almost Nothing: Detecting Weak Signals Buried in Noisy Data, at Physics in Signal and Image Processing, Jan 29-31, 2003, Grenoble, France.

Invited Reviews

  1. B.S. Sathyaprakash, Gravitational Radiation: In Celebration of Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis. Curr. Sci. 88:2129-2139, 2005.
  2. Jim Hough, Sheila Rowan, B.S. Sathyaprakash, The Search for Gravitational Waves. [GR-QC 0501007]
  3. B.S. Sathyaprakash, `` Quest for gravitational waves,'' in Advanced in Astronomy, Ed. J.M.T. Thompson, pp 123-141 (Imperial College Press, London, 2005)
  4. B.S. Sathyaprakash, W. Winkler, Gravitational Wave, Europhys. News 32:240-241, 2001.

Conference Organization

  1. 6th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshops Dec 2002, Kyoto, Japan, (SOC member)
  2. 7th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshops Dec 2003, Milwaukee, USA, (SOC member).
  3. 8th Gravitational Wave Data Analysis Workshops Dec 2004, Annecy, France, (SOC member)
  4. Triennial GR-18 conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Sydney, July 2007 (SOC Chairman)

Editorial work

I am on the editorial boards of the following two journals.

  1. On the Editorial Board of International Journal of Modern Physics – D (Jan 2001 - present)
  2. On the Editorial Board of General Relativity and Gravitation (Jan 2006 - present)

Fellowships

Two-year Leverhulme Fellowship, 2003- 2004:  Reliable templates and efficient algorithms to search for gravitational waves from binary black holes.