Improving NANOGrav Gravitational Wave Detection

我们预计我们的宇宙充满了引力波，这些引力波来自一对超大质量黑洞（质量是太阳的数百万到数十亿倍），它们在星系的中心相互绕轨道运行。这些波与LIGO首次探测到的引力波不同，因为它们是连续的，而不是突然爆发的，而且它们的频率非常低，通常需要几年的时间才能完成一个周期。这些低频引力波是北美纳赫兹引力波天文台（nanogravity）的目标。奥勒姆教授和他的团队将致力于改进用于分析纳米重力观测的数学和计算程序。这项工作将帮助nanogravity首次探测到低频引力波并确定其来源。奥勒姆教授还将进行公开演讲，并在高中讲课，将引力波天文学的兴奋带给更广泛的公众。这项工作的目的是通过新的数学技术和改进的代码来增强nanogravity合作探测引力波的能力。这些改进将增加nanogravity数据分析的重要性，有可能使其达到合作团队可以自信地宣称发现了随机背景引力波的水平。更快的编码将使更仔细地检查可能的“假警报”成为可能，并更容易探索可能从脉冲星计时观测中提取重要信号的新想法。这些技术也可能有助于探测到第一个低频引力波的单独来源，它可能是附近的一个超大质量黑洞双子星，其信号在背景上方突出。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

We expect that our universe is filled with gravitational waves coming from pairs of supermassive black holes (with millions to billions of times the mass of the sun) orbiting each other at the centers of galaxies. These waves are different from the gravitational waves detected first by LIGO, because they are continuous, rather than coming in bursts, and they have very low frequencies, often taking several years to complete a cycle. These low-frequency gravitational waves are the target of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational waves (NANOGrav). Professor Olum and his group will work to improve the mathematical and computational procedures used to analyze NANOGrav observations. This work will help NANOGrav make the first detection of low-frequency gravitational waves and determine their sources. Professor Olum will also give public presentations, and lectures in high schools, to bring the excitement of gravitational wave astronomy to the broader public.The purpose of this work is to enhance the ability of the NANOGrav collaboration to detect gravitational waves through new mathematical techniques and improved codes. These enhancements will increase the significance of NANOGrav data analysis, possibly pushing it above the level at which the collaboration can confidently claim a discovery of a stochastic background of gravitational waves. Faster codes will make it possible to check more carefully for possible "false alarms" and easier to explore new ideas that may extract important signals from the pulsar timing observations. These techniques may also contribute to the detection of the first individual source of low-frequency gravitational waves, expected to be a nearby supermassive black hole binary whose signal stands out above the background.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.