Gonzalez

Gabriela González


Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Licenciada, (~M.Sc.), University of Córdoba, Argentina, 1988.
Ph.D., Syracuse University, 1995.


Phone: (225) 578-0468
Email: gonzalez@lsu.edu


Research

My research is on the detection of gravitational waves. I work in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in Louisiana State University, where there is a large group of people working on the subject, both in theory and experiment. LSU is only 30 miles away from the LIGO Livingston Observatory (picture on the left). The LIGO project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is building three gravitational detectors in two observatories, one in Hanford, Washington, and another in Livingston, Louisiana. The detectors are essentially very long (4km, or 2.5 miles!) Michelson interferometers, which will detect minuscule differential changes in the length of the arms when a gravitational wave hits the Earth, bringing information from astronomical objects. Presently, the detectors are enhancing their designed sensitivity for the initial phase, achieved in 2007 and used for a data-taking run in 2005-2007. The LIGO detectors are able to measure distances smaller than 10-19 meters in length difference in the arms, near 100 Hz.

According to general relativity, gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime that are produced when massive astronomical objects suffer violent processes, like black hole collisions. These ripples travel through the universe, and when they pass through the Michelson interferometers, they affect the fringes in them. Being able the "view" the universe through these ripples of spacetime will open a complete new window to the universe.

I am a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and am involved with issues dealing with the the characterization of the noise, as well as also with calibration of the detectors, and the analysis of the data, searching for the waves produced by binary systems of compact stars (black holes and neutron stars) in the last orbits of their cosmic dance, before coalescing into a single black hole.

Background

I was born in 1965 in Córdoba, Argentina. I attended the University of Córdoba to pursue my "Licienciatura" (similar to a M.Sc.), and graduated in 1988. I moved to Syracuse University in 1989, where I got my Ph.D. with a wonderful advisor, Peter Saulson, working on Brownian Motion of a Torsion Pendulum (as an example of the application of the Fluctuation Dissipation Theorem to predict the spectrum of thermal noise, as we do for gravitational wave detectors). When I graduated in 1995, I went to work with the MIT-LIGO group in 1995 as a staff scientist. I joined the faculty of Penn State in 1997, and the faculty of Lousiana State University in 2001.

I am married to Jorge Pullin, who is the Hearne Chair Professor of Physics at LSU. I guess we are a living example that Einstein was wrong when he said that gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love, we met at a gravity meeting! You can read some details about our story in Physics World .

You can find me in the movies too! Not in Hollywood, but in a video posted in a very nice web documentary made by the American Museum of Natural History, and in a movie made by the National Science Foundation, called "Einstein's Messengers". If you want any further information, contact me!