Calibration and analysis of LIGO data

该奖项支持与激光干涉仪引力波天文台（LIGO）收集的数据分析相关的活动。三项工作得到了支持：校准LIGO仪器的输出——这是搜索引力波的基本第一步，搜索来自中子星的引力波，以及搜索来自宇宙弦的引力波。引力波的存在是爱因斯坦最非凡的预言之一。对引力波的直接探测将开启天文学的新纪元，并极大地扩展我们对宇宙的认识。具有空前灵敏度的引力波探测器LIGO即将进行首次探测。这项工作将为LIGO的成功做出重要贡献，并可能最终导致引力波的发现。研究活动的一个主要组成部分涉及使用由威斯康星大学密尔沃基分校维护的Einstein@Home （PI帮助开发的）。Einstein@Home是一个分布式计算项目，它利用世界各地计算机的空闲CPU周期来搜索LIGO数据中的引力波。Einstein@Home是一个非常强大的引力波搜索工具，也是一个杰出的推广成功，它将引力波天文学带到世界各地超过10万人的个人电脑上。

This award supports activities related to analysis of the data collected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). Three lines of work are being supported: Calibration of the output of the LIGO instruments---a fundamental first step in the search for gravitational waves, searches for gravitational waves from neutron stars, and searches for gravitational waves from cosmic strings.The existence of gravitational waves is one of Einstein's most extraordinary predictions. The direct detection of gravitational waves will usher in a new era in astronomy and dramatically expand our knowledge of the universe. LIGO, a gravitational wave detector of unprecedented sensitivity, is poised to make the first detection. This work will make important contributions to the success of LIGO, and may ultimately lead to the discovery of gravitational waves. A major component of the research activities involves the use of Einstein@Home (which the PI helped to develop) maintained at the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee. Einstein@Home is a distributed computing effort that harnesses spare CPU cycles from computers around the world to search for gravitational waves in LIGO data. Einstein@Home is an extremely powerful gravitational wave search tool and also an outstanding outreach success, that has brought gravitational wave astronomy to the personal computers of more than 100,000 people around the world.