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Rana X. Adhikari

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Rana X. Adhikari
Born1974 (age 49–50)
Ohio, USA
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Known forexperimental physics of gravitational wave detection, LIGO-India, quantum metrology, intelligent control, noise reduction
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisSensitivity and Noise Analysis of 4 km Laser Interferometric Gravitational Wave Antennae (2004)
Doctoral advisor
Websitehttps://caltechexperimentalgravity.github.io/

Rana X. Adhikari is an American experimental physicist, Head of the LIGO 40m laboratory, and a science communicator.[1] He is a Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech)[2] and an associate faculty member of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR).[3][4]

Adhikari works on the experimental physics of gravitational-wave detection and is among the scientists responsible for the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) that discovered gravitational waves in 2015.[5][6] He, along with Lisa Barsotti and Matt Evans from MIT, received the New Horizons in Physics Prize in 2019 for research on current and future earth-based gravitational wave detectors.[7] His research focus is on the areas of precision measurement related to surpassing the fundamental physics limits to discover new phenomena related to gravity, quantum mechanics, and the true nature of space and time.[3]

Adhikari is actively involved in the LIGO-India project, which aims to build a gravitational-wave observatory in India.[6] He was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society[8] and a member of Optica (formerly known as Optical Society of America).[9] Since 2019 he has been a member of the Infosys Prize Jury for Physical Sciences.[10]

Background

Rana Adhikari was born in Ohio to Bengali immigrants[11] and moved to Cape Canaveral, Florida with his family when he was 7.[12][13] He studied physics at the University of Florida and graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree.[14] In 2004, he received his PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[15] under the supervision of experimental physicist Rainer Weiss, with his doctoral dissertation entitled, Sensitivity and noise analysis of 4 km laser interferometric gravitational wave antennae.[16][17] He then joined Caltech's LIGO lab as a postdoctoral researcher and was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2006 and become a tenured Professor of Physics in 2012. He has also been an Adjunct Professor at the ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru, since 2012.[3]

Research

Adhikari has been involved in the construction and design of gravitational-wave detectors since 1997.[18] He started working on laser interferometers as a graduate student at MIT, with a particular focus on the variety of noise sources, feedback loops and subsystems,[19][20] and helped to reduce the noise in all 3 of the LIGO interferometers while working on the Livingston interferometer.[21][13] In 2005, he received the first LIGO thesis prize.[22]

The Adhikari Research Group, part of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech, focuses on new detector technologies for fundamental physics experiments (gravitational waves, dark matter, and near field gravity).[23] Adhikari is also affiliated with the Caltech Material Science Department and together they work on advancing mechanical oscillators, nonlinear optics, acoustic metamaterials, and high efficiency photodetection for quantum measurements.[23]

Adhikari has collaborated with Kathryn Zurek to develop a new experiment that uses tabletop instruments to observe signatures of quantum gravity.[24][25] Adhikari has also been working on alternative dark matter models.[26][27] and space-based gravitational-wave detectors.[28] He routinely collaborates with the international gravitational-wave community OzGrav[29], KAGRA and GEO600[30]

The Adhikari Research group, also known as Caltech Experimental Gravity, is currently involved in the following areas:[3]

  • Modern Control Systems
  • Machine Learning for Noise Regression
  • Cryogenic Silicon Mirrors and Interferometers
  • Quantum Fluctuations of Gravity
  • Calibration of the LIGO Detectors

LIGO-India

In 2007, during the International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology (ICGC) at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, the idea of having a LIGO observatory in India was first proposed by Rana X. Adhikari.[31] The IndIGO Consortium was formed in 2009 and since then has been planning a roadmap for gravitational-wave astronomy and a phased strategy towards Indian participation in realizing a gravitational-wave observatory in the Asia-Pacific region.[31]

File:LIGO-India MoU Signing.jpg
LIGO-India MoU Signing Ceremony

On 17 February 2016, less than a week after LIGO's landmark announcement about the detection of gravitational waves, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the Cabinet has granted 'in-principle' approval to the LIGO-India mega science proposal.[32] The Indian gravitational-wave detector would be only the sixth such observatory in the world and will be similar to the two US detectors in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana.[33] A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on 31 March 2016 between the Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science & Technology in India and the National Science Foundation of the US to develop the observatory in India.[34]

Adhikari was part of the delegation that met with the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in Washington, DC, for the signing of the MoU between India and the US to build a LIGO detector in India.[35][36] In an interview with Quartz India, Adhikari said, "The presence of world-class infrastructure in the form of the LIGO detector and the latest R&D will attract the right talent for experimental physics from all across the country."[37][38] In order to support the upcoming project, LIGO laboratory in Caltech has been hosting, for many years, talented and motivated undergraduate students from Indian institutions, pre-selected by LIGO-India Science Collaboration, as part of the International LIGO SURF program.[39]

Scientific art and media

Adhikari was the subject of the documentary LIGO: The Way the Universe is, I think directed by Hussain Currimbhoy, Carrie McCarthy, and Mark Pedri,.[40] Screened at DOC NYC, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, RAW Science Film Festival in Los Angeles, and Cineglobe Film Festival at CERN Geneva, the short film focuses on a mechanic-turned-scientist who tuned the machine that spurred a dramatic re-envisioning of the universe through the detection of gravitational waves.[41][42][43][44]

In July 2017, he was part of Limits of Knowing, a month-long set of exhibitions and programs organised with the Berliner Festspiele.[45] For this exhibition, he presented a prototype of an artwork designed to sense the environment of the Martin-Gropius-Bau. The 30 x 30 x 130 cm immersive mixed media artwork named Untitled reacted to the space and all objects in it (including the visitors) by recording a variety of data: the building's vibrations, sounds, temperature, magnetic fields, and levels of infrared light.[46]

Later that year, on the anniversary of the first detection of gravitational waves, LA artist Rachel Mason's Singularity Song was released, as part of a fiscally sponsored program of Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena.[47] Singularity Song is a meditation on black holes, pairing legendary butoh dancer Oguri with the voices of Caltech Theoretical Physicist Kip Thorne, Rana X. Adhikari, indie rock icon Carla Bozulich and experimental composer Anna Homler.[48]

In January 2020, Scientific Inquirer posted an exchange between Australian recording artist Tex Crick and Adhikari, in which they discuss time travel using a mirror and listening to music in four dimensions.[49] He was on the Y combinator podcast discussing the technical challenges of measuring gravitational waves.[50] He also appeared on Seeker's The Good, the Bad, and the Science Podcast (The Science of Men in Black)[51] and has collaborated with Pioneer Works' Director of Sciences Janna Levin.[52]

Adhikari appeared on How the Universe Works, a documentary series aired on the Discovery Science Channel.[53] In the episode Mystery of Spacetime (season 6 episode 10) he ponders on the secret structure that controls our universe, time, light, and energy.[54] He will appear in the feature-length documentary The Faraway, Nearby that examines the life of physicist Joseph Weber - the first scientist to explore the detection of gravitational waves. Alan Lightman is the co-creator of the science film.[55]

Adhikari will also be seen in BBC Studios Science Unit and Bilibili's Odyssey: Into The Future, a 3-part science series featuring Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin and many of the futuristic concepts that inspired The Three-Body Problem series of novels.[56]

Awards and recognition

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Rana Adhikari | The Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy". pma.caltech.edu. Retrieved 2022-07-24.
  3. ^ a b c d "Rana Adhikari - CV". caltechexperimentalgravity.github.io.
  4. ^ "Associates". International Centre for Theoretical Sciences.
  5. ^ Clavin, Whitney. "Rana Adhikari and Maksym Radziwill Honored with 2019 New Horizons Prizes". caltech.edu.
  6. ^ a b "Rana Adhikari awarded the New Horizons Prize". International Centre for Theoretical Sciences.
  7. ^ "Breakthrough Prize – Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Prize Laureates – Rana Adhikari". breakthroughprize.org.
  8. ^ a b "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society Physics.
  9. ^ "Next Generation Interferometers for Gravitational Wave Astronomy". Optica Frontiers in Optics 2009.
  10. ^ "Infosys Prize Physical Sciences Jury". Infosys Science Foundation.
  11. ^ ভট্টাচার্য, সায়ন্তনী. "তিন বছর বয়স থেকে অঙ্কে টান". www.anandabazar.com (in Bengali). Retrieved 2022-07-20.
  12. ^ Listening to the Thunder of Gravity in the Cosmos - R. Adhikari - 3/9/2016, retrieved 2022-07-20
  13. ^ a b Levin, Janna (2016-03-31). Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4464-8509-5.
  14. ^ "UF Physics Alumni in the News". Department of Physics. 2018-10-25. Retrieved 2022-07-24.
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  16. ^ Adhikari, Rana (2004). Sensitivity and noise analysis of 4 km laser interferometric gravitational wave antennae (Thesis thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/28646.
  17. ^ Physics, American Institute of (2022-06-06). "Rainer Weiss". www.aip.org. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
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  27. ^ Li, Xiang; Goryachev, Maxim; Ma, Yiqiu; Tobar, Michael E.; Zhao, Chunnong; Adhikari, Rana X; Chen, Yanbei (2020-12-01). "Broadband sensitivity improvement via coherent quantum feedback with PT symmetry". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  28. ^ Kuns, Kevin A.; Yu, Hang; Chen, Yanbei; Adhikari, Rana X. (2020-08-03). "Astrophysics and cosmology with a decihertz gravitational-wave detector: TianGO". Physical Review D. 102 (4): 043001. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.102.043001. S2CID 201058407.
  29. ^ "Partner Investigators". OzGrav. Retrieved 2022-07-25.
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