Realizing gravitational-wave astronomy through low-latency searches for binary black hole mergers with a network of high-precision gravitational-wave interferometers

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Current understanding of coalescing binary black holes and neutron stars suggests that Advanced LIGO (AdvLIGO) should detect somewhere between a few to several of these systems per year, thus, ushering in the age of gravitational-wave astronomy. Some of these systems are expected to be visible to electromagnetic observatories as well. Smart hardware and software tools will be developed so that an astrophysical signal observed in AdvLIGO and the advanced Virgo detector can be followed-up rapidly by pointing the electromagnetic observatories at its source, while it is still active. The complete characteristics of the signal, as made available recently through a combination of analytical solutions and numerical-relativity breakthroughs, will be used in the search for these binaries.Together, these multi-messenger observations, which use complementary gravitational-wave and electromagnetic data, promise to resolve some outstanding puzzles in astronomy, such as the origin of the short duration gamma-ray bursts and the nature of dark energy. This quest will be aided by the establishment of an experimental effort at the main campus of the Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, and could foster the growth of Physics and Astronomy education at WSU-Tri-Cities (WSU-TC), located near the site of the LIGO Hanford Observatory. That campus community has a large Hispanic population with nearby Native American communities. The co-placement of LIGO and WSU-TC in this community offers a rare setting for integrating university education with cutting edge research.