Research:
Professor Riles carries out research into the fundamental
forces of nature, working in both gravitational wave
and elementary particle physics.
He leads the Michigan Gravitational Wave Group and is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC),
which in September 2015 discovered gravitational waves from
the merger of two massive black holes. This $300 million project, led by Caltech and MIT, operates 4-km Michelson laser interferometers at sites in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana. These interferometers are designed to measure minute disturbances in space itself to a relative precision better than 1 part in a billion trillion (10-21). Transient "ripples in space" can emanate from violent but distant astrophysical phenomena, including colliding black holes or neutron stars and from supernovae.
Using LIGO data, the Michigan Gravitational Wave Group has placed upper limits on longer-lived but still weaker (<10-24) ripples from unknown, rapidly spinning neutron stars in the Milky Way. Searches are now under way for gravitational waves emitted by isolated neutron stars using an algorithm called PowerFlux and for binary neutron stars, using an algorithm called TwoSpect. Both programs were developed by the University of Michigan group. In addition, the group has carried out extensive work on LIGO detector characterization, including calibration, and on detector commissioning.
Professor Riles has also spent part of his research time in recent years studying the physics potential and the detector requirements of a future linear electron positron collider with a center of mass energy of 350 GeV and higher.
Learn more about the Michigan Gravitational Wave Group
Learn more about Gravitational Waves: Sources, Detectors and Searches
[ K. Riles, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 68, 1 (2013)]
Learn more about continuous gravitational waves:
Sampling of Presentations:
-
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
University of Michigan Physics Department Colloquium February 19, 2016
-
The Hunt for Gravitational Waves - Einstein was Right!
Saturday Morning Physics Lecture, February 20, 2016
-
Gravitational Waves - Einstein's Audacious Prediction
Saturday Morning Physics Lecture, February 13, 2016
-
To Catch a Wave - Direct Searches for Gravitational Radiation
Presentation at Shanghai Particle Physics and Cosmology Symposium in June 2013
-
Light of the Living Dead: The Remarkable Radiation from Neutron Stars
Saturday Morning Physics Lecture, October 31, 2009
-
The Present Gravitational Wave Effort
Presentation at International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle
and Underground Physics in July 2009
-
LIGO and Virgo Continuous Wave Searches
Presentation at Penn State
Workshop on Probing Neutron Stars with Gravitational Waves in June 2009
-
All-sky LIGO Search for Periodic Gravitational Waves in the
Fourth Science Run
Presentation at American Physical Society meeting in April 2007
-
Gravitational Waves -- Ripples of Space
Saturday Morning Physics Lecture I, May 7, 2005
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How to Catch a Gravitational Wave
Saturday Morning Physics Lecture II, May 14, 2005
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The LIGO Experiment -
Present and Future
Presentation at "April Meeting" of the American Physical Society, May 4, 2004
Former and Present Graduate Students:
-
Ph.D. Recipients:
- Yuan Zhou, 1997 (co-adviser with
B. Roe)
Measurement of the Bd Oscillation Frequency
using a Dilepton Sample
-
Ron Moore, 1997
Measurement of the Chirality Parameter in the Charged-Current Coupling of the Tau Lepton
-
Charles Leggett, 1998
Measurement of the Bottom-Quark Partial Decay Width of the Z using Multiple Independent Tags
-
Alan Button, 1999
Measurement of the W Boson Mass and Decay Width
-
Ross Berbeco, 2001
In Search of the Standard Model Higgs Boson
-
Jin Yamamoto,
2002
Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson
in the Leptonic Channels
- David Chin,
2005
Exploratory Studies in a Search for Continuous-Wave Gravitational
Radiation in Early LIGO Data
- Vladimir Dergachev,
2009
An All-Sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves
- Evan Goetz,
2010
Gravitational Wave Studies: Detector Calibration and an All-Sky
Search for Spinning Neutron Stars in Binary Systems
- Grant Meadors,
2014
Directed searches for continuous gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars in binary systems
- Santiago Caride,
2015
Search for continuous gravitational waves from globular cluster NGC6544 using barycentric resampling
- Jaclyn Sanders,
2015
Advanced Gravitational Wave Detectors and Detection: Arm Length Stabilization and Directed Searches for Isolated Neutron Stars
- Orion Sauter,
2018
Searching for Continuous Gravitational Waves from Unknown Isolated Neutron Stars in Advanced LIGO Data
- Ansel Neunzert,
2019
Gravitational Waves From Spinning Neutron Stars: Development of a Directed Binary Search Technique and Spectral Characterization Tools
- Aashish Tripathee,
2021
An All-Sky Search for Continuous Gravitational Waves
- Ph.D. Candidates:
- Pre-Candidates:
- Preet Baxi
- Damon Cheung
- Sean MacBride
Undergraduate Students:
-
Senior Thesis Projects: (ongoing or completed)
-
Jamie Rollins, 1998-1999 (co-adviser
with D. Gustafson)
Research at the 40-Meter LIGO Prototype Interferometer
-
Joseph Marsano, 2000-2001
Search for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars
-
Michael La Marca, 2002-2003
A Novel Interferometer Servo Control Scheme
-
Jacob Slutsky, 2003-2004
Search for Pulsar Gravitational Waves in Binary Systems
-
Sven Nyberg, 2005-2006
Frequency-Scanned Interferometry for Tracking Detector Alignment
-
Ramon Armen, 2005-2008
Detector Diagnostics for LIGO Gravitational Wave Detection
-
Pranav Rao, 2013-2016
Searching for periodicity in gamma-ray sources
-
Stephen Trembath-Reichert, 2015-2016
Spectral Line Artfact Investigations -- Tracking Time Dependence
-
Kaushik Rao, 2017-2018
Spectral Line Artifact Investigations -- Data Folding Studies
- Independent Studies Projects:
-
Justin Dombrowski, Winter 1999, Winter
2000
Analysis of the 40-Meter LIGO Prototype Interferometer 1994 Data
and
Evaluation of Alternative LIGO Servo Control Scheme
-
Joseph Marsano, Winter, Summer, Fall
2000
Analysis of the 40-Meter LIGO Prototype Interferometer 1999 Data
-
Michael La Marca, Winter 2001, Fall
2001, Winter 2002
Study of Novel Interferometer Servo Control Schemes
-
Timothy Blass, Winter 2003
Frequency Scanned Interferomety for Alignment - Reconstruction Issues
and System Design
-
Timothy Bodiya, 2003, Winter 2004
Development of Online Spectral Monitoring for the LIGO Control Room
-
Jacob Slutsky, 2003
Search for Pulsar Gravitational Waves in Binary Systems
-
Sven Nyberg, Summer/Fall 2003, 2004,
2005
Frequency Scanned Interferomety for Alignment - Measurement Issues
and Apparatus Development
-
Phil Szepietowski, Fall 2003, 2004
winter/summer 2005
Implementation of a Novel Interferometer Servo Control Scheme
- Pete Troyan, Summer/Fall 2005, 2006
Measurements of Double-Cavity Gains with Phase and Amplitude Modulation Control
- Ramon Armen, Fall 2005, 2006
Long-term Tracking of LIGO Band-Limited Calibrated Strain Power
- Courtney Jarman, Winter/Summer/Fall 2006
Studies in Pulsar Detection via Gravitational Waves
- Andy Jung, Summer/Fall 2006, 2007, Winter 2008
Development of Miniaturized Interferometer Optics
- Alex Nitz, Winter/Summer/Fall 2007, Winter 2008
Simulations of a Linear Collider Detector Silicon Tracker
- Ramon Armen, Summer/Fall 2007, Winter 2008
Development of a Phase Camera for Gravitational Wave Interferometry
- Alistair Hayden, Summer/Fall 2007, Winter/Summer/Fall 2008, Winter 2009
Earthquake monitoring at the LIGO Observatories
- Alex Nitz, Summer/Fall 2008, Winter/Summer 2009
Real-time monitoring of band-limited seismic noise at the LIGO Observatories
- Alex Nitz, Summer/Fall 2009
Refined overflying aircraft detection at the LIGO observatories
- Nitesh Alve, Eric Belfer, Jordan Cassidy, Fall 2010/Winter 2011
Seismic noise studies at the LIGO Hanford and Livingston Observatories
- Weigang Liu, Winter 2013 - Winter 2016
Investigation of periodic instrumental artifacts in LIGO data
- Daniel Mantica, Fall 2013 - Summer 2015
Including spindown in efficient barycentering of gravitational wave data
- Pranav Rao, Fall 2013 - Winter 2016
Searching for periodicity in gamma-ray sources
- Curtis Rau, Summer 2014, Summer 2015
Demonstrating seismic waves in a public exhibit ("Make a Quake")
- Stephen Trembath-Reichert, Fall 2015 - Winter 2016
Spectral Line Artifact Investigations -- Tracking Time Dependence
- Eilam Morag, Winter 2016
Spectral Line Artifact Investigations -- Comb Studies
- Kaushik Rao, Fall 2016 - Winter 2018
Spectral Line Artifact Investigations -- Data Folding Studies
- Eilam Morag, Fall 2016 - Winter 2018
Monitoring LIGO Continuous Wave Instrumental Injections with the F-Statistic and G-Statistic
- Paul Huang, Fall 2016 - Winter 2019
Methods for detecting high-spindown continuous gravitational wave signals - Semi-analytical approachess
- Sophie Hourihane, Winter 2017 - Summer 2017
Spectral Line Artifact Investigation -- Spectral display
- Humza Khan, Summer 2017 - Winter 2018
Construction of Michelson Interferometer with Audio Transduction and Servo Control
- Jessica Leviton, Summer 2017 - Summer 2019
Monitoring LIGO continuous wave instrumental injections with fully templated matched filtering
- Sophie Hourihane, Fall 2017 - Fall 2019
Viterbi tracking of CW gravitational wave signals
- Grant Weldon, Summer 2018
Spectral Line Artifact Investigation -- Fine-resolution Scanning
- Grant Weldon, Fall 2018 - Fall 2019
Spectral Line Artifact Investigation -- Histogramming Gravitational Wave Candidate Outlier Spectra
- Stephanie Zhao, Summer 2018 - Winter 2019
Spectral Line Artifact Investigation -- Comb-finding
- Reilly Penhorwood, Summer 2018 - Fall 2019
Spectral Line Artifact Investigations -- Data Folding Studies
- Charlie Badger, Fall 2019
Methods for detecting high-spindown continuous gravitational wave signals - Semi-analytical approaches
LIGO Observational Results
L3 Publications
