WoU-MMA: Collaborative Research: Gravitational wave cosmology with tidal Love numbers

最近用 LIGO 探测器探测到的引力波 (GW) 预示着引力波天体物理学的新时代。 伊利诺伊大学和芝加哥大学之间的一项研究合作将调查仔细测量引力波事件的特性，与传统的天文观测相结合，是否可以帮助天文学家更好地确定与宇宙年龄和膨胀率有关的哈勃常数 H0。 这项研究将与旨在改变中学生和公众对物理和科学态度的活动相结合，通过新开发的天文馆表演和为中学教师提供的符合标准的课程计划，以及首席科学家的公开演讲。 这项研究的目的是研究是否可以使用更复杂的中子星聚结中释放的引力波模型来更好地测量哈勃常数。 今天使用的引力波波形模型取决于二元无量纲参数中每颗恒星的潮汐洛夫数，这些参数测量物体响应潮汐的刚性。 众所周知，这些常数彼此相关，并且通过某些状态方程不敏感关系与二元的质量比相关。后者的使用允许提取各个潮汐参数，然后可以使用这些参数来提取二元分量的源质量。另一方面，波形还取决于双星的红移线性调频质量，可以将其作为独立参数提取。因此，通过潮汐参数对各个源质量的测量和对红移线性调频质量的测量的组合应该产生独立于任何电磁对应物的红移测量。该研究将研究通过这种技术测量红移的效果如何，以及通过将这种红移测量与来自电磁对应物的信息相结合或通过叠加来自多个引力波事件的信息是否可以提高H0估计的准确性。 该项目的首席研究员开发了一个名为“爱因斯坦引力播放列表”的天文馆节目，旨在向年轻观众解释广义相对论、黑洞和引力波。该节目将在中西部地区部署，首先在伊利诺伊州尚佩恩的斯塔克尔天文馆，然后在芝加哥的阿德勒天文馆。该节目将与“中学极限引力”配套，这是一套针对中学教师的完整、符合标准的课程计划，旨在支持他们学习如何向中学生讲授引力透镜、中子星、黑洞和引力波等主题的内容。 该项目推进了 NSF 宇宙之窗大创意的目标。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The recent detection of gravitational waves (GWs) with the LIGO detector has heralded a new era of GW astrophysics. A research collaboration between the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago will investigate whether careful measurement of the properties of GW events, when combined with traditional astronomical observations can help astronomers to better determine the Hubble constant, H0, which is related to the age and expansion rate of the universe. This research will be integrated with activities aimed at changing the attitudes of middle-school students and the general public toward physics and science, through a newly-developed planetarium show and accompanying standards-aligned lesson plans for middle school teachers, along with public talks by the lead scientists. The research is aimed at studying whether the use of more sophisticated models for the GWs emitted in the coalescence of neutron stars can be used to better measure the Hubble constant. The GW waveform models used today depend on the tidal Love numbers of each star in the binary, dimensionless parameters that measure the rigidity of a body in response to tides. It is known that these constants are related to each other and to the mass ratio of the binary through certain equation-of-state insensitive relations. The use of the latter allows for the extraction of the individual tidal parameters, which can then be used to extract the source masses of the binary components. The waveform, on the other hand, also depends on the redshifted chirp mass of the binary, which can be extracted as an independent parameter. Therefore, the combination of the measurement of the individual source masses through the tidal parameters and the measurement of the redshifted chirp mass should yield a measurement of the redshift, independently from any electromagnetic counterpart. The research will study how well the redshift can be measured through this technique, and whether the accuracy to which H0 can be estimated may be improved by combining this redshift measurement with information from an electromagnetic counterpart or through the stacking of information from multiple GW events. The principal investigator of the project has developed a planetarium show called Einstein’s Gravity Playlist, which is designed to explain general relativity, black holes, and gravitational waves to young audiences. This show will be deployed in the Midwest, starting at the Staerkel Planetarium in Champaign, Illinois, and later at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The show will be paired with "eXtreme Gravity for Middle School," a set of fully formed, standards-aligned lesson plans for middle school teachers aimed at supporting them in learning how to deliver content on topics including gravitational lensing, neutron stars, black holes and gravitational waves to middle school students. This project advances the goals of the NSF Windows on the Universe Big Idea.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.