Gravitational Wave Astrophysics with LIGO: The Oregon Experimental Relativity Group

该奖项支持引力波探测器调试和表征方面的研究，以及数据分析，并阐述了美国国家科学基金会“宇宙之窗”大构想的优先领域。在LIGO俄勒冈实验相对论小组寻找引力辐射。随着2015年9月通过观测黑洞合并发现引力波，以及2017年通过观测中子星合并发现具有引力波的多信使天体物理学，LIGO合作已经成为21世纪基础物理、天文学、天体物理学和宇宙学领域的关键参与者。由于LIGO探测器在时空中测量如此微小的扰动--距离比质子直径小10,000--它对环境干扰极其敏感，例如地面运动或背景磁场。在这一奖项期间，LIGO仪器将更加灵敏，这意味着对已知天体物理源的探测速度将会增加，可能会出现以前未观测到的新的天体物理源。有了这一奖项，该小组将开发所需的专业知识和工具包，以应对增强型LIGO仪器所带来的数据质量和分析挑战。该团队的研究生将继续在这些发展中发挥关键作用。该团队将就这些令人兴奋的发展进行公开陈述。这包括为俄勒冈州高中科学教师组织年度研讨会，以便他们能够向他们的学生传达最新的发现。该团队将进一步发展表征相关环境扰动与引力波数据耦合的能力。探测器的更高灵敏度，以及相关的更高的检测率，使得这些开发势在必行。该团队已经开发了软件，以确定低延迟的引力波候选者的潜在环境污染水平。这是在数据质量报告中提供的，可供立即评估臭氧开放公共警报。这些工具相当初级，还需要进一步开发，以实现可靠和准确的完全自动化进程的目标。为了跟上LIGO干涉仪灵敏度提高的步伐，将需要继续改进环境注射的仪器和提供。研究生将从事环境注入研究和相关的数据分析，以及引力波天体物理项目，涵盖伽玛暴、磁暴和超新星等主题。虽然这些研究需要改进，以跟上LIGO灵敏度的提高和对来源的更好的天体物理理解，但在某些情况下，将需要新的技术。这方面的一个例子是所谓的亚阈值伽玛暴。这一需求在GRB/GW170817中得到了引人注目的说明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports research in gravitational wave detector commissioning and characterization, as well as data analysis and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. A Search for Gravitational Radiation at LIGO Oregon Experimental Relativity Group. With the discovery of gravitational waves in September 2015 via the observation a merger of black holes, and the birth of multi-messenger astrophysics with gravitational waves in 2017 via the observation of a merger of neutron stars, the LIGO collaboration has become a key player in 21st century science in the areas of fundamental physics, astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Because the LIGO detectors measure such tiny perturbations in spacetime -- distances 10,000 smaller than the diameter of a proton -- it is extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances, such as ground motion or background magnetic fields. During the period of this award, the LIGO instruments will be even more sensitive, meaning that the rate of detections of known astrophysical sources will be increased, and new, previously unobserved sources may appear. With this award, the group will develop the expertise and toolkits needed to meet the data quality and analysis challenges provided by the enhanced LIGO instruments. The team's graduate students will continue to play a critical role in these developments. The team will give public presentations on these exciting developments. This includes the organization of a yearly workshop for Oregon high school science teachers, so that they can convey the latest findings to their students.The team will further develop the ability to characterize the coupling of relevant environmental disturbances to gravitational-wave data. The greater sensitivity of the detectors, along with the associated higher detection rates make these developments imperative. The team has developed software to determine potential environmental contamination levels to gravitational wave candidates in low latency. This is provided in the data quality reports made available for immediate evaluation for the O3 open public alerts. These tools are fairly rudimentary and further development will be needed to achieve the goal of a fully automatized process which is reliable and accurate. Continued improvement of the instrumentation and delivery of environmental injections will be needed to keep pace with the improved sensitivity of the LIGO interferometers. Graduate students will undertake environmental injection studies and associated data analyses, as well as gravitational wave astrophysics projects, covering the topics of GRBs, magnetar flares, and supernovae. While refinements will be needed for these studies to keep pace with the improved LIGO sensitivities and better astrophysical understanding of the sources, in some cases new techniques will be needed. One example for this is for the so-called sub-threshold GRBs. The need for this was spectacularly illustrated with GRB/GW170817.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.