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Barry Barish
Caltech, Stonybrook and UCR
6/30/2026
UCR Center�Experimental� Cosmology & Instrumentation
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Astronomy & Astrophysics
High Energy & Nuclear
AMO
Table Top
Experimental
Cosmology
Group
Focus:
Encompasses a broad range of subjects in fundamental physics
With a common instrumentation theme
CECI: Center for Experimental Cosmology & Instrumentation
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Steve Choi
CMB
Jon Richardson
LIGO
Interferometry
Shawn Westerdale
Dark Matter / Neutrino
Barry Barish
Director
Haibo Yu
Deputy Director
Edgard Bonilla
New Faculty – LIGO�Suspensions
Vagelis Papalexakis
UCR Computing Science
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Rana Adhakari
Accelerating Basic Science with AI Advancing AI through Fundamental Research
Barry C Barish
Caltech/UCRiverside/Stonybrook
29-June-2026
Improving LIGO Sensitivity with AI
LIGO-G1602199
A Little History
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The Importance and Increasing Role of Advances in Instrumentation in Life and in Science
Mid – 1800s
1926
2026
LIGO-G1602199
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The Birth of Modern Astronomy – January 1610
Galileo – Using an Instrument to Discover four moon of Jupiter
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20th Century : Multiwavelength Astronomy
Using Instruments to Look at the Sky in Different Wavelengths
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Observe Astronomical Phenomena
at different wavelengths over the electromagnetic spectrum
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21st Century: “Combined Instruments”
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Event Horizon Telescope: Black Hole Image
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Next Frontier: Multimessenger Astronomy
Electromagnetic
Neutrinos
Gravitational Waves
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Major Discoveries in Physics – 21st Century
LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
Atlas and CMS
HIGGS BOSON - 2011
Kamiokande & SNO
Neutrino Oscillations
1998 & 2001
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
LIGO
2015
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Some Issues for Next Generation Physics Experiments
Detector Sensitivities – Approaching Fundamental Limits. For example: cosmic rays, systematic errors, quantum noise, etc)
Background Suppression – dark matter interactions, neutrinoless double beta decay, proton decay, rare Higgs processes, new particles at colliders. Requirements include: ultrapure detector materials, underground labs, active veto systems, precise timing, sophisticated event reconstruction.
Extreme Detector Scales – multi-kiloton liquid argon detectors, 100 km particle colliders, million pixel silicon trackers, 40 km arms for gravitational wave interferometers, next generation CMB Technical challenges: Industrial scale production, quality assurance, long-term reliability, maintenance and $$$
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Some Key Issues for Next Generation of Physics Experiments
Precision Caibration – calibrations at the 0.1% or better, long-term detector stability, precise timing synchronization, alignment over enormous detector sizes.
Computing and AI – petabytes to exabytes of data, detector monitoring and controls. AI becoming essenstial for trigger systems, event reconstruction, detector calibration, anomaly detection, simulation speeds, data quality monitoring. Challenge due to black box .. determing confidence in result.
Energy Consumption, International Collaborations, Time Scales and $$$
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Overall Challenges for the Future
Recent discoveries were largely a result of developing larger scale instruments that employ new and advanced technologies
The future advances will depend more on seamless integration of precision instrumentation, advanced computing, and machine learning at every stage of an experiment from design to construction to operation to analysis and interpretation
Thanks
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Have a Productive Meeting