Observing and understanding gravitational wave signals from black hole and neutron star mergers

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Following the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015, we have now observed around 50 signals from merging black holes and neutron stars. During your PhD, we expect to observe hundreds more signals. This PhD project involves looking for the most unique signals, such as those with highly spinning black holes exhibiting orbital precession, or binaries where the masses of the two components of the binary are very different. The project will involve obtaining a better understanding of the gravitational waves emitted by such systems; developing techniques to ensure that our searches are capable of identifying these signals buried in the detector data and ensuring that the astrophysical parameters of the system; such as the masses and spins of the black holes, are accurately measured. The search results will be used to obtain a better understanding of how these black hole and neutron star binaries are formed.