GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE ASTRONOMY WITH BINARY COMPACT OBJECTS: SOURCE MODELING AND LIGO DATA ANALYSIS

该奖项支持LIGO科学合作组织（LSC）和紧凑型二元聚结（CBC）分析小组框架内的研究。它包括通过引力波数据分析和源建模对含有两个致密物体的双星的引力波信号进行天体物理学解释的项目。有效地拟议的工作重点是开发一个具体的框架和一个工具包，用于处理CBC检测（或上限），以提取最大的可用天体物理信息的二进制紧凑的对象与任何质量和自旋配置。研究活动的重点是一些关键问题，这些问题的答案对于解释LIGO当前和未来的引力波观测非常重要。未来几年对引力波物理学的发展及其天文学解释非常重要，这项研究的重点是如何最大限度地提高未来探测的收益，但也要注意限制当前致密天体形成理论的上限。这项研究在广泛的背景下对更广泛的致密物体天体物理学社区感兴趣：例如，恒星和双星系统的演化、中子星星和黑洞的形成和演化、伽马射线爆发、球状星团和银河系中心的恒星动力学，因为在未来几年里，LIGO观测可以为天文学和天体物理学中一些长期存在的问题提供独特可靠的答案。该项目中开发的马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗计算工具将在LSC内外提供，因此可以使CBC搜索之外的LSC项目受益，并增强其他科学和工程背景下参数估计的研究基础设施。外联活动利用与阿德勒天文馆天文博物馆的现有合作，每年有数十万游客;这种联系确保了研究理解在芝加哥大都市区的多样化城市环境中的广泛传播。

This award supports research within the framework of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Compact Binary Coalescence (CBC) analysis group. It includes projects in the area of astrophysical interpretation of gravitational-wave signals from binaries with two compact objects, through both gravitational-wave data analysis and source modeling. Effectively the proposed work focuses on developing a concrete framework and a tool-kit for the processing of CBC detections (or upper limits) in order to extract the maximal available astrophysical information for binaries with compact objects with any mass and spin configuration. The research activity focuses on a number of key questions the answers to which are important for the interpretation of current and future gravitational-wave observations with LIGO. The next few years are very important for the development of gravitational-wave physics and its astronomical interpretation, and this research focuses on ways of maximizing the gain from future detections, but also from upper limits expected to constrain current theories of compact-object formation. This research is of interest to the broader community of compact-object astrophysics in a wide range of contexts: e.g., stellar and binary system evolution, neutron star and black hole formation and evolution, gamma-ray bursts, stellar dynamics of globular clusters and galactic centers, as in the coming years LIGO observations can provide uniquely reliable answers to some of the long-standing questions in astronomy and astrophysics. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo computational tools to be developed in this project will be made available within and outside the LSC, and hence can benefit LSC projects beyond the CBC searches and enhance the research infrastructure for parameter-estimation in other scientific and engineering contexts. Outreach activities take advantage of the existing collaboration with the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum with hundreds of thousands of visitors per year; this connection ensures the broad dissemination of research understanding in the diverse, urban environment of the Chicago metropolitan area.