LIGO India

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) - India is a planned advanced gravitational-wave (GW) observatory to be located in India as part of the worldwide network of GW observatories. The project will be built by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, with a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Science Foundation (NSF), USA, along with several national and international research and academic institutions. The major operations required for LIGO-India has been broken down and been distributed among the four lead institutions - Directorate of Construction Services and Estate Management, Mumbai (DCSEM); Institute of Plasma Research, Gandhinagar (IPR); Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune (IUCAA); and Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore (RRCAT). LIGO-India is intrinsically a multidisciplinary mega-science project that requires expertise from a variety of fields (e.g., laser, vacuum, optics, computer, etc., and of course Physics) and provides cutting edge research opportunities.