NANOGrav@UPRM: Growing and Characterizing the NANOGrav Gravitational-Wave Detector

NANOGrav@UPRM：NANOGrav 引力波探测器的发展和表征

• 批准号: 2216793
• 负责人: Henri Radovan
• 金额: $ 52.06万
• 依托单位: University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2216793&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NANOGrav; UPRM; Growing; Characterizing; Gravitational

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This project partners the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez (UPRM) with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), an international scientific collaboration comprising several dozen institutions. The goals are (i) to increase the U.S. workforce diversity by promoting research and education of Hispanic/Latino undergraduate students in physics, and (ii) to advance several key NANOGrav science goals. The activities are tailored to retain physics students, to train them in forefront physics research, and to motivate them to enter graduate school by way of a series of educational and closely supervised research projects. NANOGrav uses a galaxy-sized detector of pulsars that emit radio pulses with atomic-clock precision. The arrival times of those pulses are recorded with world-leading radio telescopes across the U.S. and Canada. NANOGrav searches for correlated changes in the arrival times, induced by ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves, that are expected to be emitted by extremely massive black holes at the cores of merging galaxies. UPRM students will be trained in a variety of data quality and analysis methods, as well as simulation techniques and astrophysical interpretation by several NANOGrav senior scientists. Besides nurturing the talent and fostering the participation of minorities, NANOGrav will directly benefit from the research by expanding and characterizing the array of pulsars. It is this so-called pulsar timing array that will detect gravitational waves and characterize their sources and hence contribute to our understanding of the history of the Universe and our place in it. A holistic approach is implemented, where the students will be immersed in remote educational programs, present NANOGrav's research activities at local high schools, participate in workshops organized locally and on the U.S. mainland, take part in research projects, and spend several weeks at a NANOGrav institution contributing to daily ongoing research activities.This award partners the Physics Department at the Mayagüez campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPRM) with the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center to advance several key NANOGrav science goals and to increase the participation and retention of minorities in the field of physics. NANOGrav’s mission is to detect and characterize low-frequency gravitational waves from merging supermassive black hole binaries using a pulsar timing array as a galactic-scale detector. Low-frequency gravitational-wave detection and characterization will provide information on galaxy merger rates, supermassive black hole masses, and processes leading to black hole coalescence. Characterization of individual pulsars of the array in turn yields information on, e.g., neutron star masses, equations of state, populations, and astrometric data; tests of general relativity; interstellar electron distributions; solar wind properties; and pulsar emission mechanisms. Undergraduate students from UPRM will be involved in research projects of relevance to NANOGrav's mission, mentored at UPRM as well as remotely and onsite at several NANOGrav institutions. The research will involve searching for new pulsars, data quality checks, pulsar simulation development, and characterizing pulsar emission properties. The students will participate in workshops at UPRM, the Arecibo Observatory, and other NANOGrav sites, as well as to attend general NANOGrav and training meetings on the mainland. The planned research activities are focused on growing and characterizing the pulsar timing array. The sensitivity of the array is proportional to the number of pulsars and hence finding new pulsars is of fundamental importance. It has also been observed that some pulsars change emission properties, which limits their timing resolution and usefulness in the array and therefore an investigation of pulsar emission and accompanying interstellar medium effects will provide a valuable contribution to NANOGrav science.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.

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。该项目与波多黎各马亚圭斯大学（UPRM）和北美纳赫兹引力波天文台（nanogravity）合作，这是一个由几十个机构组成的国际科学合作项目。目标是(i)通过促进西班牙裔/拉丁裔本科生在物理学方面的研究和教育来增加美国劳动力的多样性，以及（ii）推进几个关键的纳米重力科学目标。这些活动旨在留住物理专业的学生，培养他们从事前沿物理研究，并通过一系列教育和密切监督的研究项目激励他们进入研究生院。nanogravity使用了一个星系大小的脉冲星探测器，可以发射原子钟精度的射电脉冲。这些脉冲的到达时间由遍布美国和加拿大的世界领先的射电望远镜记录下来。nanogravity搜索的是到达时间的相关变化，这种变化是由时空中被称为引力波的涟漪引起的，引力波预计是由合并星系核心的超大质量黑洞发射的。upm学生将接受各种数据质量和分析方法的培训，以及几位nanogravity资深科学家的模拟技术和天体物理解释。除了培养人才和促进少数民族的参与外，nanogravity将通过扩大和表征脉冲星阵列直接受益于研究。正是这个所谓的脉冲星定时阵列将探测引力波并描述其来源，从而有助于我们了解宇宙的历史和我们在宇宙中的位置。采用整体方法，学生将沉浸在远程教育项目中，在当地高中展示NANOGrav的研究活动，参加当地和美国大陆组织的研讨会，参加研究项目，并在NANOGrav机构度过几周时间，为日常的研究活动做出贡献。该奖项与波多黎各大学mayagez校区物理系（UPRM）和北美纳赫兹引力波天文台（nanogravity）物理前沿中心合作，以推进几个关键的纳米重力科学目标，并增加少数民族在物理领域的参与和保留。nanogrv的任务是利用脉冲星定时阵列作为星系尺度探测器，探测和表征来自合并的超大质量黑洞双星的低频引力波。低频引力波探测和表征将提供有关星系合并率、超大质量黑洞质量和导致黑洞合并过程的信息。阵列中单个脉冲星的特征反过来产生中子星质量、状态方程、种群和天体测量数据等信息；广义相对论的检验；星际电子分布；太阳风特性；脉冲星发射机制。来自upm的本科生将参与与NANOGrav任务相关的研究项目，在upm以及几个NANOGrav机构的远程和现场进行指导。这项研究将包括寻找新的脉冲星、数据质量检查、脉冲星模拟开发和脉冲星发射特性表征。学生们将参加upm、阿雷西博天文台和其他NANOGrav站点的讲习班，并参加在大陆举行的一般NANOGrav和培训会议。计划的研究活动主要集中在脉冲星定时阵列的发展和表征上。阵列的灵敏度与脉冲星的数量成正比，因此发现新的脉冲星是至关重要的。我们还观察到，一些脉冲星会改变发射特性，这限制了它们在阵列中的时间分辨率和实用性，因此对脉冲星发射和伴随的星际介质效应的研究将为纳米重力科学提供有价值的贡献。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。