Gravitation physics and relativistic astrophysics

该奖项资助了相对论天体物理学和广义相对论中几个不同主题的理论研究，重点是激光干涉仪引力波天文台（LIGO）和拟议的空间探测器激光干涉仪空间天线（LISA）可能探测到的引力辐射源。主要课题有：(A)恒星或小黑洞注入大旋转黑洞的引力信号的计算方法的发展和实现；(B)发展近似方法，以便对若干天体系统的引力相互作用进行高度精确的计算，这将与今后在太阳系和其他地方检验广义相对论有关；(C)计算各种可供选择的引力理论的实验约束，这些理论被用来解释最近观测到的宇宙加速膨胀。该奖项的广泛影响如下。研究生和本科生的教育和培训将纳入研究计划。研究项目的广度将对研究生特别有益。培养女研究生将有助于相对论领域的性别多样性（首席研究员合作过的7名研究生中有3名是女性）。发展引力波计算方法的工作最终将对引力波天文学产生重大影响，使引力波信号的探测和分析成为可能。首席研究员正在参加由美国物理学会引力专题小组组织的世界物理年演讲计划的演讲计划。作为该项目的一部分，首席研究员将在本科院校讲授广义相对论。此外，首席研究员偶尔会在一些小学院给物理学专业的本科生讲课，比如今年在伊萨卡学院。

This award funds theoretical research in several different topics in relativistic astrophysics and general relativity, with a focus on sources of gravitational radiation that might be detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and by the proposed space based detector, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The principal topics are: (A) the development and implementation of methods to compute the gravitational signals from stars or small black holes inspiralling into large spinning black holes; (B) the development of approximation methods to allow highly accurate computations of the gravitational interactions of systems of several bodies, which will be relevant for future tests of general relativity in the Solar System and elsewhere; and (C) computing the experimental constraints on various alternative theories of gravity that have been proposed as explanations for the recently observed acceleration of the expansion of the Universe.The broader impacts of this award are as follows. Education and training of graduate and undergraduate students will be integrated into the research program. The breadth of the research program will be especially beneficial to the graduate students. The training of female graduate students will contribute to gender diversity in the field of relativity (3 of the 7 graduate students the principal investigator has worked with are female). The work on development of computational methods for gravitational waveforms will eventually have a significant impact on gravitational wave astronomy, by enabling the detection and analysis of gravitational wave signals. The principal investigator is taking part in the Speakers Program of the World Year of Physics Speakers Program being organized by the Topical Group in Gravitation of the American Physical Society. As part of this program the principal investigator will give lectures on general relativity to undergraduate institutions.In addition the principal investigator occasionally gives lectures to undergraduate physics majors in small colleges, for example this year at Ithaca College.