Studies of Strong-Gravity Binaries and Their Gravitational Waves

该奖项支持广义相对论中双星系统动力学的研究，并描述这种双星产生的引力波。 这项工作的目标是提高我们对双星系统中黑洞如何相互作用以及它们的相互作用如何影响它们产生的引力波的理解。 这项工作为进一步观测黑洞动力学和超强引力提供了基础。 该奖项还支持引力波信号的“声化”，使用音频来说明引力波如何编码源信息，以及研究旋转黑洞轨道行为的在线工具。该奖项支持的大部分工作将使用黑洞微扰理论（BHPT），这是一种在大质量比极限下很好地建模双星的方法，当一个双星可以被看作是一个围绕一个大黑洞运行的“小”物体时。 一个计划中的项目调查如何频谱的模式激发的二进制合并与二进制的几何形状的变化。 在NSF的支持下，这个问题取得了实质性的进展;包括测量影响在内的进一步细节都是通过该奖项进行研究的。 其他项目包括继续研究绕黑洞旋转的天体的动力学，分析潮汐变形黑洞的事件视界动力学，以及研究耗散自力。 这些项目是从构成博士学位主要部分的工作中发展起来的。研究生的论文由以前的NSF奖支持。 最后，该奖项支持开发PI黑洞微扰理论代码的开源版本。 该代码的简化功能版本（仅限于圆形赤道轨道引起的扰动）于2018年发布，并已被许多研究人员使用。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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 on the dynamics of binary systems in general relativity, and into characterizing the gravitational waves that such binaries produce. The goal of this work is to improve our understanding of how black holes in binary systems interact with one another, and how their interactions affect the gravitational waves they produce. This work provides a foundation for further observational probes of the dynamics of black holes and ultra-strong gravity. This award also supports “sonifications” of gravitational wave signals, using audio to illustrate how gravitational waves encode source information, as well as online tools for studying the behavior of orbits of spinning black holes.Much of the work supported under this award will use black hole perturbation theory (BHPT), an approach that works well modeling binaries in the large mass ratio limit, when a binary can be regarded as a 'small' object orbiting a large black hole. One planned project investigates how the spectrum of modes excited by binary coalescence varies with the binary's geometry. Substantial progress on this problem was made under prior NSF support; further details including implications for measurement are studied with this award. Other projects include continuing investigations of the dynamics of spinning bodies orbiting black holes, and an analysis of event horizon dynamics in tidally deformed black holes, and studies of the dissipative self force. These projects grew from work that constituted major portions of the Ph.D. theses of graduate students supported by a prior NSF award. Finally, this award supports the development of an open-source version of the PI’s black hole perturbation theory code. A reduced functionality version of this code (restricted to perturbations arising from circular, equatorial orbits) was released in 2018, and has been used by many researchers. The full version will likely be an even more useful product for many colleagues.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.