This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| LIGO Data Grid | |
|---|---|
| Name | LIGO Data Grid |
| Abbreviation | LDG |
| Established | 2000s |
| Type | computational infrastructure |
| Headquarters | Caltech |
| Region served | United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, India |
| Parent organization | LIGO Scientific Collaboration |
LIGO Data Grid
The LIGO Data Grid is a distributed computing and storage infrastructure designed to support the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and allied projects such as VIRGO and KAGRA. It provides high-throughput data transfer, archival storage, and workflow execution to enable searches for signals like those reported by the LIGO–Virgo Collaboration during observations associated with events such as GW150914 and multi-messenger campaigns with Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The project integrates resources from institutions including Caltech, MIT, LIGO Livingston Observatory, LIGO Hanford Observatory and international centers affiliated with European Gravitational Observatory.
The infrastructure was developed to address the scale of data produced by interferometers operated by LIGO Laboratory, VIRGO, and later KAGRA during observing runs like O1 and O2. It interfaces with observatories such as LIGO Hanford Observatory and LIGO Livingston Observatory for raw strain data and with analysis groups including Compact Binary Coalescence teams, Burst search groups, and Continuous wave search collaborations. The LDG facilitates collaborations with projects such as Electromagnetic counterpart follow-up campaigns involving Swift and Fermi.
The architecture combines compute clusters at sites like Caltech, MIT, Cardiff University, and INFN centers with grid middleware influenced by systems used at CERN and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Core components include data transfer services (modeled after GridFTP), metadata catalogs inspired by DCache and iRODS, and job scheduling via systems comparable to GlideinWMS and HTCondor. The network layer relies on science networks such as Internet2, GÉANT, and regional research and education networks connecting centers like SUnet and ESnet.
Data management pipelines mirror practices used at Large Hadron Collider experiments, with emphasis on provenance, replication, and tape-backed archives located at centers like National Center for Supercomputing Applications and RZG. The LDG handles multiple data tiers, from raw interferometer strain recorded at LIGO Hanford Observatory and LIGO Livingston Observatory to calibrated frames used by the CBC pipelines and skymaps produced for events like GW170817. Metadata catalogs integrate with services used by NASA missions and observatories such as Gemini Observatory and ALMA for multi-messenger cross-referencing.
Workflows support analyses from template-based matched filtering used by PyCBC and GstLAL to unmodeled searches employed by coherent WaveBurst. The grid facilitates distributed Monte Carlo campaigns, parameter-estimation runs using samplers like LALInference and Bilby, and rapid localization via BAYESTAR. Job orchestration interoperates with resources at Open Science Grid sites and high-performance facilities such as XSEDE and regional supercomputing centers utilized by groups like AEI. Software stacks are version-controlled with systems similar to GitLab and deployed using configuration tools akin to Ansible.
Access control incorporates certificate-based authentication aligned with practices at Open Science Grid and ESGF systems, leveraging trust models used by DOE laboratories and institutions like LLNL. Authorization follows group-based policies comparable to those in WLCG collaborations, with role definitions for analysts from LIGO Scientific Collaboration, data release procedures mirroring policies from NASA archives, and embargo management coordinated with experiments such as IceCube. Operational security aligns with standards adopted by NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure and regional network providers including ESnet and Internet2.
Operations are governed by working groups within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and involve partner institutions such as Caltech, MIT, INFN, AEI, and Cardiff University. Routine activities include coordinating observing runs with VIRGO and KAGRA, supporting rapid alert dissemination to partners like Fermi and Swift, and organizing joint software efforts with communities around PyCBC, LALSuite, and Bilby. Collaborative governance draws on models used by LHC experiments and community projects such as Open Science Grid and XSEDE.
Development began in the early 2000s as data volumes from interferometers outgrew single-site processing used at institutions like Caltech and MIT. Early milestones paralleled developments at CERN and in the Open Science Grid era, with collaborative contributions from INFN, AEI, and national computing centers. The LDG evolved through observing runs O1, O2, and O3 supporting discoveries including GW150914 and GW170817, adapting to increased needs for low-latency alerts integrated with observatories such as LIGO Hanford Observatory, LIGO Livingston Observatory, and astronomical facilities like VLA and Pan-STARRS.
Category:Gravitational-wave astronomy Category:Scientific computing