| Job PurposeThe post holder will join the LISA Optical Bench Team at the University of Glasgow.LISA is a European Space Agency (ESA) led mission to launch a gravitational detector in the mid 2030s. The mission has just been adopted by ESA as a flagship scientific mission in the next decade. The LISA instrument consist of 3 satellites in a triangular configuration with 2.5-million-kilometre arms, moving in an Earth-like orbit around the Sun. Gravitational waves from sources throughout the Universe will produce slight oscillations in the arm lengths (smaller than the diameter of an atom). LISA will capture these motions and thus measure the gravitational waves by using laser links to monitor the displacements of test masses free-falling inside the spacecraft. The LISA satellites and their scientific payload are being built by ESA, ESA member nations, and NASA.Each spacecraft carries 2 optical benches which are at the heart of the interferometry system. A joint team from the University of Glasgow and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) in Edinburgh are responsible for developing and building these optical benches. The team is funded by the UK Space Agency (UKSA).The optical benches are built on Zerodur, a low expansion glass, with many optical components precision aligned and hydroxy-catalysis bonded to the optical bench base. As part of the optical bench build, a variety of sub-systems such as beam collimators, beam shaping, imaging systems and beam dumps have to be developed, tested and aligned on to the optical bench.You will be involved in the designing, building testing and documenting these systems and processes.Typical investigations might involve some combination of lasers, fibre optics, optical modulators, interferometers, precision manipulators, precision measurement, quadrant photodiodes, home-built electronics, optical beam profiling and data acquisition and control systems.A significant part of the process is liaising with the many different partners in the project – sub-system suppliers from multiple European countries, ESA, UKSA, ATC, NASA, etc.Please note that for this role, we must comply with a funder’s/partner’s conditions, namely restrictions on exporting information covered by Export Administration Regulations (EAR). For this reason, there is a genuine occupational requirement that we are unable to consider applications at this time from nationals from countries excluded in the NS2 column in the country list https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-docs/2383-supplement-no-1-to-part-738/file |
