RUI: Computational Gravitational-Wave Research for the Era of First Observations

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A century after Einstein predicted their existence, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has made the first observation of gravitational waves--ripples of warped space and time. The waves came from a pair of merging black holes over a billion light years away. This award will help scientists to observe as many gravitational waves as possible while learning as much as possible about the waves' astronomical sources. Specifically, this award supports a research program that uses supercomputers to predict the gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron stars and to study the most important source of noise limiting LIGO's reach. Through their participation in this program, students at California State University Fullerton, a primarily undergraduate-serving and Hispanic-serving institution, will learn transferable skills in research and computing while playing important roles in the inauguration of a new era in astronomy. The imminent gravitational-wave discoveries could dramatically change our understanding of the universe.This award renews support for California State University Fullerton's computational gravitational-wave research program. The PI and undergraduate and master's-level researchers will address two crucial challenges in computational gravitational-wave physics using high performance computing. First, they will use the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC) to model merging black holes and neutron stars--the most promising sources for Advanced LIGO--focusing on the challenging but astrophysically important case of rapid black-hole spins. The resulting simulated gravitational waveforms will help maximize LIGO's reach, in part by leading to better approximate waveform models for future LIGO searches; the simulations will also reveal how warped spacetime behaves under extreme conditions never before modeled. Second, the PI and student researchers will use high-performance computing to model thermal noise--one of the most significant fundamental limits to detectors' astrophysical sensitivities--focusing on a highly promising avenue for improvement, crystalline mirror materials. Leveraging these highly sophisticated techniques will allow for breakthroughs in the understanding of the fluctuations in complex elastic structures, including mirrors with crystalline coatings. These new insights will allow for substantial improvements in the thermal noise of high precision measurements, currently a limiting noise source for gravitational-wave detection, atomic clocks, and inertial sensing.