CAREER: Gravitational Wave Detection Using Pulsars

安德里亚·洛曼博士（富兰克林和马歇尔学院）将集中精力探测重力辐射的爆发源，并继续在随机引力波背景探测领域开展工作。引力波的爆发源包括偏心黑洞双星、宇宙弦和超大质量黑洞的产生。洛曼博士为实现这些主要目标将开展的活动将产生一些额外的科学成果。这些措施包括增加对星际介质的了解，增加对各种引力波源（如双质量黑洞和宇宙弦）种群限制的了解，增加已知脉冲星的数量，提高定时脉冲星的精度，改进太阳系星历表，以及改进对随机引力波背景能量密度的限制。在她的研究中，Lommen博士将通过对双星系统的建模，计算它们的波形，以及对来自世界各地望远镜的脉冲星数据进行每周监测来吸引本科生。由于这项工作将与许多国际合作者一起完成，它将有助于向富兰克林和马歇尔大学的本科生介绍天文学，以及一般的全球天文学家网络，特别是引力波探测。美国和澳大利亚的高中还将在一个项目中进行联络，在这个项目中，两国的高中生将在澳大利亚新南威尔士州巴瑟斯特的查尔斯斯特大学天文台学习在教室里进行远程观测。该项目还将招收一名研究/教学博士后。

Dr. Andrea Lommen (Franklin and Marshall College) will conduct a focused effort toward detecting burst sources of gravitational radiation as well as continuing work in the area of stochastic gravitational wave background detection. Burst sources of gravitational waves include eccentric black hole binaries, cosmic strings, and production of super massive black holes. The activities Dr. Lommen will undertake to address these primary goals will yield a number of additional scientific results. These include increased understanding of the interstellar medium, increased understanding of constraints on populations of various gravitational wave sources such as binary massive black holes and cosmic strings, increased number of known pulsars, increased precision in timing pulsars, improved solar system ephemerides, and improved limits on the energy density of the stochastic gravitational wave background.In conjunction with her research, Dr. Lommen will engage undergraduates through modeling of binary systems, computing their waveforms, and performing weekly monitoring of the pulsar data as it comes in from telescopes located all over the world. Because this work will be done in conjunction with a number of international collaborators, it will serve to introduce Franklin and Marshall undergraduates to astronomy and to a global network of astronomers in general, and to gravitational wave detection in particular. There will also be a liaison between US and Australian high schools in a program where the high school students from both countries will learn to conduct remote observations in their classrooms on an on-going basis at the Charles Sturt University Observatory in Bathurst, NSW, Australia. The program will also host a research/teaching postdoctoral fellow.