The kHz GW workshop was held at Hongo this week and two researchers from Australia, Lilli Sun (ANU) and Paul Lasky (Monash) gave talks on the on-going gravitational-wave observation and the kHz detector discussions.
The workshop was co-hosted by another ASPIRE program by Prof Hatsuda (RIKEN). The Program Officer of ASPIRE’s Quantum division also attended the first joint ASPIRE event with a few managers from JST.
Shalika visited UWA for two weeks after the LVK meeting. She worked with Alex on birefringence measurements of sapphire at 2 um wavelength. She also learnt how to use and align a CO2 laser with Koh at Gingin facility.
A number of people leave ANU at the same time this year. Jonas already left, taking a postdoc position at Denmark, Dan finished his PhD and is leaving ANU in the end April. James is about to finish his PhD and is going to Chicago. But Today, we are all here at ANU, and here is the group photo of the team quantum (we do miss Kar Meng, Ryo, etc. though).
Haoyu and Kenji (Nagoya University) visited University of Adelaide after the LVK meeting. They worked on KAGRA Finesse simulations with Dr. Daniel Brown.
Takano-kun and Diego, with some other students in U Tokyo visited ANU after the LVK meeting. Takano-kun and his colleagues had discussions and lab tours mainly with the TORPEDO team lead by Prof. Slagmolen. Diego discussed his work on Continuous Wave analysis with Dr. Sun.
A biannual meeting for the LVK collaboration was held at Melbourne and many of our ASPIRE colleagues attended. After the conference dinner, the venue transformed into a karaoke party, and Japanese colleagues performed YOASOBI.
We see balloon at 7:30am everyday this week in Canberra!
Carl Blair gave a talk about Gingin 80m prototype highlight and plan with future TAMA collaboration at the TAMA300 Strategy meeting in NAOJ.
Deeksha Beniwal, just graduated from University of Adelaide, and Michael Millar visited the KAGRA site. They said it was the first time visiting gravitational wave detectors. Sakamoto-san helped to dive in the heavy snow and Haoyu gave the tour.
Michael Millar is visiting NAOJ for a two-week project for measuring birefringence of sapphire mirrors. He is an student at University of Western Australia.
