The ANU Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 Summer Research Program at its HQ at The Australian National University. 

The program runs over 10 weeks from 25 Nov 2024 until 31 Jan 2025 and best suits third-year and Honours students in Physics, Astrophysics and Engineering, currently enrolled at all universities across the country. 

The students will be supervised by our world-class academics, work closely with the Gravitational Wave Laboratory – where some of the most amazing recent research breakthroughs have been initiated – and interact with our bright HDR students. 

There is a generous allowance of up to $500/week on offer, in addition, students currently enrolled at interstate universities will receive a travel allowance. 

Projects on Offer: 

• Laser Stabilisation based on optical fibre for Inter-spacecraft laser links:

The goal of this project is to explore thermal isolation options for fibre optical laser stabilization systems. Such systems may be the future of laser stabilizaiton for Inter-satellite laser interferometers missions used to measure Earth's water move (like the GRACE missions) and Gravitational Waves from supermassive blackholes (like the LISA mission).

• Digital Methods for Distributed Acoustic Sensing:

This project aims to build an experimental testbed for distributed acoustic sensing using conventional telecommunications optical fibre. You will build anexperimental optical system from the ground up to test a new digital modulation technique for distributed acoustic sensing. The project is hands on, and involves an experimental build, software development or a mix of both. This project can be extended into further study.

• Building a Rotation Test System: 

This project aims to rotation test an optical gyroscope on a precision rotation stage as part of an industry driven research project with Forge Photonics. There are avenues for you to explore optical, electronics and mechanical system design and construction, with the final project scope to be determined to align with your interests. You will be working in a research team alongside academics, and industry engineers to build, and with the end goal of seeing a prototype device rotation tested. Note there are intellectual property transfer requirements as part of this project.

• Building a Variable Gain Amplifier Controller:

The torsion pendulum dual oscillator (a.k.a TorPeDO) sensor uses digitally-implemented Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) loops in its optical readout. A part of the digital implementation is a Variable Gain Amplifier (or VGA) board, which has to be electronically interfaced and controlled. This electronics project will see the building and testing of a new controller for our VGA, giving experience in electronics and electric-circuit testing techniques. Applicants with some prior electronics experience (such as basics in circuit analysis, IC soldering etc.) recommended.

• Controls optimisation for the TorPeDO upper suspension stage:

The torsion pendulum dual oscillator (a.k.a TorPeDO) sensor is mounted on a multi-stage suspension isolation platform for reducing the impacts of direct local environment effects on the system. This project will see development of an optimal controls strategy for the upper suspension stage, via the "blending" of different readout sensor data streams into a control signal, then developing a digital feedback loop to the suspension actuators. This project will give experience in more advanced feedback controls and programming, applicable in many other areas of Physics and STEM. Applicants with at least some programming experience (MATLAB and Linux) recommended.  

• Optimisation of the TorPeDO optical readout crossover:

The torsion pendulum dual oscillator (a.k.a TorPeDO) sensor optical readout consists of five lasers. These lasers will use a combination of Phase Locked Loops (PLLs) and Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) Loops, both important and widely used optical control techniques in many areas of physics, such as optical communication protocols through to Bose-Einstein Condensate apparatus. This project will help in combining PLLs and PDH loops crossover for the TorPeDO readout, giving experience in both these types of loops, as well as general optics and feedback controls. 

• Using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as an optical feedback device:

The torsion pendulum dual oscillator (a.k.a TorPeDO) sensor is mounted on a multi-stage suspension isolation platform for reducing the impacts of direct local environment effects on the system. The suspension chain has resonance peaks, which we aim to reduce via optical feedback using Mach-Zehnder interferometers. This experimental optics project will build a prototype benchtop Mach-Zehnder interferometer and develop the optical feedback strategy, giving experience in lasers, optics, optical measurement and basic feedback controls.

• Measuring the maximum rate of Neutron Star Mergers from the ATLAS Project's 7 years of Data:

ATLAS is a quadruple 0.5m telescope system with two units in Hawaii (Haleakala and Mauna Loa), and one each in Chile (El Sauce) and South Africa (Sutherland). Each telescope is equipped with an STA-1600 10.5x10.5k CCD with 1.86 arcsec pixels giving a FOV of 5.4x5.4 degrees.  we are robotically surveying the whole sky with a cadence of 1 day between -50 and +50 degrees declination and 2 days in the polar regions, weather permitting.  While carrying out the primary mission for Near-Earth Objects, we search for and discover 1000s of extra-galactic transients per year, including Neutron Star Mergers. To date, ATLAS has not detected any neutron star mergers other than the GRB170817, and given its sky coverage and length of service (7 years), this will put quite strong limits to the rate of neutron star mergers in the Universe. This project is to calculate that limit from the current data set, while getting to be part of the day-to-day operations of ATLAS, and our follow-up here in Australia. You will discover supernovae!

• Interferometric Sensing for Inertia Sensors

This project is to develop and investigate an interferometric sensor to readout and sense the motion of a flexure based inertia sensor. We will use a simple Michelson interferometer and analyses its characteristic to create a low noise, large dynamic range readout. One way this can be achieved is to slightly misalign one of the Michelson arms, which would create a TEM01 mode. Together with the standard Michelson fringe, we can track and reconstruct a large dynamic range (many wavelengths) displacement sensor. 

To apply:

1. fill out the registration form via this link, 

2. send your CV and your most recent academic transcript to cga@anu.edu.au.  

Applications close on 20 Oct 2024 at 11:55pm and the successful applicants will be informed by 31 Oct 2024. 

For further information, please contact cga@anu.edu.au.