Gravitational Radiation and Relativistic Astrophysics

理论研究正在两个领域进行，即引力波及其探测。 第一个领域是先进的激光干涉引力波探测器的新技术和技术的发明。 这些先进的探测器将需要测量40公斤重的租用晶体镜的运动，其精确度非常高，以至于这些镜子受量子力学定律的约束，而不是经典物理学定律。这些新技术和新工艺需要，除其他外，新的反射镜和激光束配置，旨在处理当前引力波探测器中不存在的量子效应，改变激光离开干涉仪后的操纵方式，并重塑干涉仪光束的横截面。第二个研究领域是引力波天体物理源的理论建模，目标是预测源的动力学行为和它们发射的波的细节。 在被模拟的源中，有快速旋转的新生中子星的振荡，中子星的旋转从伴星吸积气体（"低质量X射线双星“），黑洞/黑洞和黑洞/中子星双星螺旋的晚期，高度相对论性阶段，黑洞的碰撞，以及黑洞对中子星星的撕裂等。引力波探测新技术和新工艺的研究，探测器是LIGO中先进探测器的关键基础（激光干涉仪引力波天文台）开始于2006年，并在随后的十年中为更先进的探测器。 这项研究利用了量子信息论领域的人类知识，并为之做出了贡献。量子信息论是一门新的世纪的学科，其中也包括量子计算。 这项研究可能会对技术领域产生很大影响，在未来的两三年内，这些技术领域将面临测量精度的量子限制，并将试图通过“量子非破坏”（QND）技术来规避它们。这些技术领域包括量子光学和纳米技术。 对引力波源的研究将为LIGO产生的引力波数据的分析提供关键的基础：它将提高在噪声LIGO数据中发现引力波信号的能力，并将为从发现的信号中提取天体物理信息提供工具。 因此，这项研究将在未来的黑洞，中子星及其振荡和碰撞的引力波基础研究中发挥关键作用。

Theoretical research is being carried out in two areas related togravitational waves and their detection. The first area is theinvention of new techniques and technology for advancedlaser-interferometer gravitational-wave detectors. These advanceddetectors will entail measuring the motions of 40 kilogramsapphire-crystal mirrors with an accuracy so high that the mirrors aregoverned by the laws of quantum mechanics and not the laws of classicalphysics. The new techniques and technology entail, among other things,new configurations of mirrors and laser beams designed to deal withquantum effects that are absent in current gravitational-wavedetectors, changes in how the laser light is manipulated after itleaves the interferometer, and a reshaping of the cross sections of theinterferometer's light beams. The second area of research is thetheoretical modeling of astrophysical sources of gravitational waveswith the goal of predicting the sources' dynamical behaviors and thedetails of the waves they emit. Among the sources being modeled areoscillations of rapidly spinning, newborn neutron stars, the spins ofneutron stars that are accreting gas from companion stars (``Low-MassX-Ray Binaries''), the late, highly relativistic phase of inspiral ofblack-hole/black-hole and black-hole/neutron-star binaries, collisionsof black holes, and the tearing apart of a neutron star by a blackhole.The research on new techniques and technology for gravitational-wavedetectors is a key underpinning for the advanced detectors that arebeing proposed for construction in LIGO (the Laser InterferometerGravitational Wave Observatory) beginning in 2006, and for even moreadvanced detectors in the subsequent decade. This research makes useof, and contributes to, human knowledge in the area of quantuminformation theory --- a new, 21st century discipline that alsoincludes quantum computation. This research is likely to have muchimpact on areas of technology that---in the coming two or threedecades---will confront quantum limits on the accuracy of measurementand will try to evade them via ``quantum nondemolition'' (QND)techniques. These areas of technology include quantum optics andnanotechnology. The research on sources of gravitational waves willprovide key underpinnings for analyses of the gravitational-wave datato be produced by LIGO: It will improve the ability to findgravitational-wave signals in the noisy LIGO data, and it will providetools for extracting astrophysical information from the discoveredsignals. Thus, this research will play a key role in futuregravitational-wave-based studies of black holes, neutron stars, andtheir oscillations and collisions.