Probing Strong Gravity with Gravitational Waves

引力波天体物理学正在进入一个发现和探索的新时代，高级LIGO有望在未来几年内首次探测到引力波。LIGO项目的关键任务之一是测试爱因斯坦的广义相对论，这是它以前从未被测试过的地方：与太阳系中发现的引力相比，引力是巨大的。这样的任务是可以实现的，因为引力波编码了黑洞和中子星碰撞产生引力波时存在的强大引力的信息。该奖项支持一项研究计划，该计划旨在开发和实施一个通用的、与模型无关的框架，以测试爱因斯坦的广义相对论，并在引力波数据中寻找与广义相对论的反常偏差。将开发和实施实现这一目标的必要工具，以便在LIGO中随时部署这些工具。研究将使引力波探测的全部发现潜力得以开发。鉴于即将到来的先进探测器和引力波天体物理学的曙光，这种类型的研究也是及时和相关的。虽然探测到偏离爱因斯坦的预测可能标志着变革性的新物理学，但如果没有这样的偏离，可能会有力地证实广义相对论在一个尚未经过考验的体系中的存在。

Gravitational wave astrophysics is entering a new era of discovery and exploration, with first detections expected within the next few years with Advanced LIGO. One of the key missions of the LIGO project is to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity where it has never been tested before: where the gravitational forces are enormous compared to those found in the solar system. Such a task is achievable because gravitational waves encode information about the strong gravitational forces present when black holes and neutron stars collide to produce gravitational waves. This award supports a research program to develop and implement a generic and model-independent framework to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity and to search for anomalous deviations from it in gravitational wave data. The necessary tools to achieve this objective will be developed and implemented, so that they can be readily deployed in LIGO.The research will enable exploitation of the full discovery potential of gravitational wave detection. This type of research is also timely and relevant, in view of upcoming, advanced detectors and the dawn of gravitational wave astrophysics. While the detection of a departure from Einstein's predictions could signal transformative new physics, the absence of such departures could provide strong confirmation for general relativity in an as yet untested regime.