Dynamical, Strong-Field Gravity

该项目的研究目标集中在理解爱因斯坦广义相对论的强场制度。这包括天体物理学和广义相对论的理论方面。在天体物理学方面，主要的工作是对我们宇宙中引力波来源的持续研究，特别是双黑洞、黑洞-中子星和双中子星碰撞。当中子星参与碰撞时，进一步的问题将涉及到潜在的可观察到的电磁对应物发射和弹射物质中r过程元素的产生。理论工作包括研究引力坍缩和相应的临界现象，引力主导相互作用的粒子碰撞的超相对论性制度，以及高维时空中的引力性质。后一个主题特别感兴趣的是渐近反德西特（AdS）时空，其中引力动力学可以通过弦理论的AdS/CFT对应关系与强耦合共形场论（CFTs）的物理相关。这项研究将为我们理解宇宙中引力波的来源提供重要的信息，从而形成新兴的引力波天文学领域的一个组成部分。它将进一步提供对广义相对论的动态强场机制的更深入的理解，并有助于扩展我们对广义相对论、高能物理和量子引力之间相互关系的认识。这些项目将涉及研究生、本科生和博士后。因此，他们将被训练去做领先的科学研究，在相应的物理领域成为知识渊博的人，并擅长于高性能计算和数值方法。这些技能对许多职业来说都是无价的，因此也将有利于并促进那些随后希望在学术界以外从事职业的学生和博士后的发展。

The research goals of the project are focused on understanding the strong-field regime of Einstein's theory of general relativity. This encompasses both astrophysical and theoretical aspects of general relativity. On the astrophysical side, the main effort is an ongoing study of sources of gravitational waves in our universe, in particular binary black hole, black hole-neutron star and binary neutron star collisions. When neutron stars are involved in the collision, further questions involving potentially observable electromagnetic counterpart emission and production of r-process elements in ejected material will be pursued. The theoretical work includes studies of gravitational collapse and corresponding critical phenomena, the ultrarelativistic regime of particle collisions where gravity dominates the interaction, and the nature of gravity in higher dimensional spacetimes. Of particular interest for the latter subject are asymptotically Anti de-Sitter (AdS) spacetimes, where the gravitational dynamics can be related to the physics of strongly coupled conformal field theories (CFTs) via the AdS/CFT correspondence of string theory.This research will contribute crucial information to our understanding of sources of gravitational waves in the universe and so form an integral part of the burgeoning field of gravitational wave astronomy. It will further provide a deeper understanding of the dynamical strong-field regime of general relativity, and help expand our knowledge of the interrelations between general relativity, high energy physics, and quantum gravity. The pursuit of these projects will involve graduate students, undergraduates and postdoctoral fellows. They will thus be trained to do leading scientific research, become knowledgeable in corresponding areas of physics, and adept in high-performance computing and numerical methods. These skills are invaluable to many professions, and would thus also benefit and further the development of those students and postdocs that subsequently wish to pursue careers outside academia.