The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)-India project marked a new milestone with the inauguration of a testing and training facility at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) in Indore. The facility will support the construction and assembly of detector subsystems while the main observatory site is under development in Hingoli, Maharashtra.
The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) inaugurated the new facility, which will serve as a key staging area for assembling and testing LIGO-India components. It will also enable pump-down testing of prototype vacuum chambers fabricated domestically, a critical process for validating equipment performance.
The LIGO-India project is part of an international scientific network that includes LIGO observatories in the United States, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan. These observatories detect gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime caused by high-energy cosmic events such as black hole mergers.
The new facility is expected to contribute to advancing gravitational wave research in India while providing opportunities for local researchers and students to engage with the project. LIGO-India aims to enhance global efforts to study cosmic phenomena by expanding the existing gravitational wave detection network.
The development of the facility is also anticipated to create employment opportunities and encourage academic interest in gravitational wave astronomy and related fields.
According to the DAE, the testing facility represents a step forward in supporting the LIGO-India observatory, which is expected to be a major scientific infrastructure for research in astrophysics and gravitational waves.