t cht lk to be working with Cardiff University and ARCCA to support ground-breaking projects such as LIGO .
t cht lk to be working with Cardiff University and ARCCA to support ground-breaking projects such as LIGO .
“ The success of this project and recognition through the Global HPC Wire Award is testament to the outstanding work being delivered by the whole team across ARCCA , Logicalis and Lenovo .”
With the recent boost in computing capabilities at Cardiff University ’ s Advanced Research Computing , how do you envision the future of research in astrophysics and related fields , especially regarding your work on detecting gravitational waves ?
We asked Professor Stephen Fairhurst further questions to find out more about the project .
Could you elaborate on how the addition of Lenovo ThinkSystem servers has impacted the research efforts of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ( LIGO ) project ? What specific advancements or discoveries have been made possible by this enhanced computing power ? Additionally , could you share some insights into how supercomputing has contributed to broadening our understanding of gravitational waves and space-time phenomena ?
In May of 2023 , the LIGO observatories began their fourth observing run , following three previous successful runs between 2015 and 2020 . Since the previous run , the sensitivity of the detectors has been improved which
At present , we are in a mid-run break from observing where some improvements are being made to the detector . In March , we will continue observing , this time joined by the Virgo detector . In the second half of the run , we expect to see many more events and the computing capacity provided by the Cardiff cluster will continue to be vital to our ability to carefully analyse all the observations . With three observatories ( two LIGO and one Virgo ) we are able to localise events in the sky
and we ’ re hoping to catch a merger of two neutron stars , which would also emit light which could be observed by satellites and telescopes around the world .
Professor Martyn Guest
During this time , the Hawk cluster at Cardiff , powered by the Lenovo ThinkSystem servers , has contributed the second most computing globally to this effort . means that we are now observing gravitational-wave signals from merging black holes at a rate of about two per week , and have already doubled the total number of observations . After we observe a signal , we run computationally intensive analyses to infer the astrophysical properties of the source , such as the masses and spins of the black holes . During this time , the Hawk cluster at Cardiff , powered by the Lenovo ThinkSystem servers , has contributed the second most computing globally to this effort . This has enabled us to perform timely analysis of the observations and thereby identify early and focus on the most interesting events which challenge our existing astrophysical models of how black holes form and evolve .
In the further future , we are developing the case for new gravitational-wave observatories , Cosmic Explorer and the Einstein Telescope , which would be sensitive to the merger of black holes formed from the first stars in the Universe . These observatories would provide a unique way to probe the early history of the Universe . In the coming years , we will use the computing resources to model the observational capabilities of these future observatories and help to finalise their design to optimise the scientific payoff . p
We expect the first detailed results arising from observations in the fourth observing run to be published later this year .
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