Simulations show that next generation gravitational wave detectors will be able to detect the initial part of the wave before the actual merger of objects (or collision?). If you can identify this signal in time, you could make the 'regular' telescopes look into that particular direction and look for a signal in light, and you could use a neutrino detector at the same time (think IceCube, KM3NeT, Baikal and others that look at large parts of the sky) to look in the neutrino channel.
This way you would have gravitational wave-, light- and neutrino-channels from a single object. This is still many years (decades?) away, but would be incredible for studying exotic objects.
If you mean, measuring the neutrino baseline difference when a GW passes through the Earth, perhaps. I never thought about it, but its definitely intriguing.
> If you mean, measuring the neutrino baseline difference when a GW passes through the Earth, perhaps. I never thought about it, but its definitely intriguing.
That's where my mind went. Lasers need a lot of precise controls for vibration and such, and neutrinos move through matter almost like it doesn't exist. If the emitter and detector were on opposite sides of the earth, and gravity effects the neutrinos since they have mass, would that increase the resolution of a gravity wave detection?
The multi-messenger concept is fascinating too. Seems like the volume of discover is going to keep increasing exponentially.
The main issue I foresee with this plan is getting a useful reading. We measure distances with photons by interfering them with a known reference. This raises a number of problems for neutrinos:
1. Neutrino reflection. LIGO and LISA use ultra precise mirrors. Can we build a neutrino mirror? Could we get away with something else instead, say sending beams around opposite sides of the Sun to combine them using gravitational lensing?
2. Neutrino interference. Is this a thing? Pretty sure it's not a thing.
3. Neutrino speed. Photons move at the speed of light. Neutrinos don't. Since we measure time and convert, we need a precise value for neutrino speed, which we currently lack.
> 2. Neutrino interference. Is this a thing? Pretty sure it's not a thing.
It's an interesting question. I think that the answer is yes.
Assuming there are no experimental physicist nearby...
Trying to use a grating grid or mirrors with neutrinos is impossible, so you must try something else.
You must pick another particle that has charge and that decays to neutrinos, like in the article.
Yo must use a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern%E2%80%93Gerlach_experime... to make two rays, the idea is that each particle is "split" in the two rays. (The correct formulation is more complicated and use a lot of algebra. The incorrect formulation say that each particle is split. Just bear with me and assume the particles can be split.)
If you miss align the two rays, perhaps with a magnetic field, you can get an interference pattern when the two parts of the particle colide when the ray colide (again, the algebra makes sense in spite the English version is weird).
But you can make the collision far away to ensure the particles have decayed and in the site of the collision they are neutrinos instead of the original particle. After the decay, the "two half" of the neutrinos are coherent and can produce an interference pattern.
So if you design everything very carefully, I think it's possible at least in theory.
I really don't expect that is humanly possible to build that experiment, but there are some ingenious people out there.
[What about aligning a supernova and two nearby black holes that act as gravitational lens. I'm not sure it works, but is sounds too cool not to try.]
I was just thinking about the distances used: in LIGO/VIRGO, the sizes of the chambers is 4 km, and the interferometric distance they look for is 10^{-18} m to detect a GW.
For the baseline of DUNE we have 1300km, so that would mean 10^{-15} m if we do a very simple comparison. (I am not that familiar with GW detection!).
Measuring neutrino events at such a resolution would seems not realistic currently, as most detector measure events at sizes of cm (reactor experiments)- to meters (atmospheric / galactic). However, don't discount someone coming up with a brilliant insight to actually do this measurement. Some things we measure today were thought impossible not that long ago, like GWs and the Event Horizon black hole image.
Simulations show that next generation gravitational wave detectors will be able to detect the initial part of the wave before the actual merger of objects (or collision?). If you can identify this signal in time, you could make the 'regular' telescopes look into that particular direction and look for a signal in light, and you could use a neutrino detector at the same time (think IceCube, KM3NeT, Baikal and others that look at large parts of the sky) to look in the neutrino channel.
This way you would have gravitational wave-, light- and neutrino-channels from a single object. This is still many years (decades?) away, but would be incredible for studying exotic objects.
If you mean, measuring the neutrino baseline difference when a GW passes through the Earth, perhaps. I never thought about it, but its definitely intriguing.