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GW天体物理学的一个新纪元。伊利诺伊大学和芝加哥大学的一项研究合作将调查仔细测量GW事件的性质，结合传统的天文观测，是否可以帮助天文学家更好地确定哈勃常数H0，它与宇宙的年龄和膨胀率有关。这项研究将与旨在改变中学生和公众对物理和科学的态度的活动结合起来，通过新开发的天文馆展览和附带的中学教师标准一致的教案，以及主要科学家的公开演讲。这项研究的目的是研究是否可以使用更复杂的模型来描述中子星合并过程中释放出的GW，以更好地测量哈勃常数。今天使用的GW波形模型依赖于二进制无量纲参数中每颗恒星的潮汐乐夫数，这些参数衡量了天体对潮汐的反应的刚性。众所周知，这些常数通过某种状态方程不敏感关系相互关联，并与双星的质量比有关。后者的使用允许提取单独的潮汐参数，然后可以用来提取二元组分的源质量。另一方面，波形还取决于双星的红移啁啾质量，该质量可以作为独立参数提取。因此，通过潮汐参数测量单个源质量和测量红移啁啾质量相结合，应该产生独立于任何电磁对应物的红移测量。这项研究将研究通过这种技术可以多好地测量红移，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，或者通过堆叠来自多个GW事件的信息，是否可以提高估计H0的精度。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表演，旨在向年轻观众解释广义相对论、黑洞和引力波。该展览将部署在中西部，首先是伊利诺伊州香槟的斯塔克尔天文馆，然后是芝加哥的阿德勒天文馆。该节目还将配合《中学极限引力》，这是一套完整的、符合标准的中学教师课程计划，旨在支持他们学习如何向中学生传授引力透镜、中子星、黑洞和引力波等主题的内容。这个项目推进了NSF宇宙大理想之窗的目标。这一奖项反映了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。

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.