Columbia Experimental Gravity Group (GECo)

The discovery of gravitational waves (GW) from binary black holes by LIGO in 2015 was a quantum leap for the field of astrophysics, and it has also excited the fundamental physics community. As predicted, the discovery also opened a new door in studying previously hidden cosmic phenomena.

Our current research projects include:

• Multimessenger searches for gravitational waves.
• Timing verification studies during observation runs (LIGO's timing system was Columbia's critical hardware contribution to the detectors).
• Application of machine learning techniques to GW detector data.

Our expertise cover multiple fronts of innovations going back to the early Initial LIGO era.

• We initiated the field of multimessenger astrophysics with gravitational waves and founded multimessenger efforts within LIGO in the early 2000s.
• Our group ran the first multimessenger search for a joint cosmic source in 2003, spearheaded one of the most impactful papers of the initial LIGO era on the origin of GRB070201, and established the grassroots effort within LIGO for externally triggered searches for GWs.
• We pioneered multimessenger efforts with gamma-ray bursts and soft gamma repeaters.
• GECo co-conceived, initiated, and co-developed the electromagnetic followup of GW triggers program for the Initial LIGO era.