Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy with Advanced LIGO

我们已经进入了人类探索宇宙的新时代：引力波天文学时代。引力波是时空结构中的涟漪，携带着关于遥远天体的信息。 高级激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）对双黑洞合并的观测证实了爱因斯坦百年前的预测。我们现在可以利用引力波来研究宇宙。引力波携带的信息可以告诉我们黑洞碰撞时会发生什么，大质量恒星如何死亡，重元素如何形成，引力如何作用以及宇宙如何演化。该小组将继续开发用于从仪器噪声中提取信号的数据分析技术。特别是，该小组的研究集中在由黑洞和/或中子星组成的双星系统产生的信号上。新方法通过有效利用LIGO可用的计算机资源来加速检测，并提供二进制参数的估计，如质量和旋转速率。引力波天体物理学提供了令人兴奋的机会，激励和教育所有年龄段的学生，加强美国的多样性和竞争力中学和大学生，并提高公众的科学素养。通过该奖项开发的计算方法可转移到许多科学和技术领域。该奖项直接支持Advanced LIGO的使命，以探测来自合并中子星和黑洞的引力波。黑洞和中子星是自然界最紧凑的物体，它们的碰撞是基础物理学和天体物理学的变革实验室。紧凑物体合并的高度相对论性速度和强烈弯曲的时空产生引力波，这些引力波在碰撞时编码了物体的属性：它们有多大质量，它们有多远，以及它们旋转的速度。这些性质可以用来了解大质量恒星的生存和死亡。该奖项将支持提高Advanced LIGO紧凑型二进制搜索灵敏度的研究，并开发下一代参数测量技术，以从观测信号中提取物理学。拟议项目将继续推动科学工作流程工具和高通量计算的开发，这将对整个科学界产生广泛影响。

We have entered a new age of human exploration of the universe: the age of gravitational-wave astronomy. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime that carry information about distant astrophysical objects. The observation of binary black hole mergers by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has confirmed a one-hundred-year-old prediction of Einstein. We can now use gravitational waves to study the universe. Gravitational waves carry information that can tell us what happens when black holes collide, how massive stars die, how heavy elements form, how gravity works, and how the universe evolved. This group will continue the development of data analysis techniques used to extract signal from instrumental noise. In particular, the group's studies concentrate on signals generated by binary systems composed of black holes and/or neutron stars. The new methods accelerate the detection by making efficient use of computer resources available to LIGO and provide estimations of the parameters of the binary such as masses and rates of rotation. Gravitational-wave astrophysics offers exciting opportunities to inspire and educate students of all ages, strengthening both the diversity and competitiveness of U.S. secondary and college students, and improving the scientific literacy of the general public. The computational methods developed through this award are transferable to many areas of science and technology.This award directly supports Advanced LIGO's mission to detect gravitational waves from merging neutron stars and black holes. Black holes and neutron stars are nature's most compact objects and their collisions are a transformative laboratory for fundamental physics and astrophysics. The highly relativistic speeds and strongly-curved spacetimes of compact object mergers generate gravitational waves that encode the properties of the objects as they collide: how massive they are, how far away they are, and how fast they spin. These properties can then be used to understand how massive stars live and die. This award will support research to improve the sensitivity of Advanced LIGO's compact binary searches and develop next-generation parameter-measurement techniques to extract the physics from observed signals. The proposed project will continue to drive the development of scientific workflow tools and high-throughput computing that will have broad impact across the scientific community.