News

After more than 13 years of work and 25 releases we are proud to announce version 1.0 of the interferometer simulation tool Finesse!

Finesse is a fast and relatively easy to use software to simulate laser interferometers. It can be used for detector commissioning, interferometer design, or simply for learning more about laser optics. It is freely available for many platforms and fully open source. We also provide simple examples and an extensive manual.

Of course, we will continue to extend and improve Finesse. This version 1.0 completes the open source release of Finesse after a period of extensive testing and optimising the modeling of higher-order modes for beam shape changes and mirror surface distortions. The future of Finesse lies in the implementation of radiation pressure effects and quantum noise calculations; in fact, we have already started work on this.

We have been quite busy recently and have submitted four new papers to the arxiv.org pre-print server. These papers provide a good glimpse into the work we do in our group, from investigating optical effects in detail to the design of future gravitational wave detectors. The pre-print server is open access, so have a look:

I am pleased to present the second issue of the LIGO Magazine! This issue of the magazine of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) features articles about black holes, and the astrophysics and data analysis that LIGO can do to find out more about these elusive objects. We also include a mix of conference reports, news items and stories from the detector sites. If you want to know more about gravitational waves and about what is going on in our community download the magazine now!

Our Korean colleagues have organized their first gravitational wave conference Gravitational Waves: New Frontier. The talks cover a wide range of existing and planned projects. The slides are available for download, have a look!

Today and on Saturday this week, we are taking part in a BBC Stargazing Live event on the University Birmingham campus. We are showing our exhibition Looking for Black Holes with lasers with a new addition: the Mirror Suspension model with the full Advanced LIGO BOSEMs and control electronics.

It's been a lot of fun so far with a great audience, see the queue in front of the Physics building.

Thanks to Reinier Jonker at NIKHEF we can now also provide a Dutch version of Space Time Quest. We have also posted a new Processing sketch Reflection which demonstrated how electromagnetic waves behave at an optical surface.

At the moment all our interactive applets are based on Java applets, but because Java is disappearing from browsers more and more we plan to re-post all the interactive sketches as HTML5+Javascript, making use of Processing's Javascript mode.

A new version of Space Time Quest has been released. If you want to know how we design gravitational wave detectors such as Advanced LIGO or the Einstein Telescope, download the game and try for yourself!

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) today has published the first issue of a new magazine: The LIGO Magazine has been designed for the scientific collaboration itself as the main audience. However, it is published as a free download (pdf file) and I believe that this magazine is an interesting read also for people outside that community. It contains a lot of articles, stories and fascinating photos, have a look!

It is now 15 years since we had the idea to create the interferometer simulation Finesse. The software has been used for more than 10 years to design and improve optical systems and it is time to have a look at the impact it had. I have started collecting references to scientific reports and papers that reference Finesse and so far I have found 56 such documents. Have a look at that list and read about the History and Impact of Finesse! Please let me know if you know of other documents that should be listed here.

During the last weeks I had a look at the gwoptics.org user statistics. Here is quick summary in case you are interested (or you can have a look at some plots): The data extracted from the webserver logfiles show a steady and fast increase in visitors to gwoptics.org since its launch, with currently an average of 140 unique visitors per day and more than 100,000 page impressions per month.

Our interferometer simulation Finesse has become open source! Not only can you download the source code, but we have also setup a professional Redmine project page for Finesse with a bug tracker, a Wiki, user forums and an easy way to view the code online. Have a look around and get involved! We are happy to help by answering questions in the forums and welcome any kind of contribution to the development of Finesse.