Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy with Advanced LIGO

我们已经进入了人类探索宇宙的新时代：引力波天文学的时代。引力波是时空结构中的涟漪，携带着遥远天体物理物体的信息。先进激光干涉仪引力波天文台（LIGO）对双黑洞合并的观测证实了爱因斯坦一百年前的预言。我们现在可以用引力波来研究宇宙。引力波携带的信息可以告诉我们黑洞碰撞时会发生什么，大质量恒星是如何死亡的，重元素是如何形成的，引力是如何起作用的，以及宇宙是如何演化的。该小组将继续开发用于从仪器噪声中提取信号的数据分析技术。特别是，该小组的研究集中在由黑洞和/或中子星组成的双星系统产生的信号上。新方法通过有效地利用LIGO可用的计算机资源来加速探测，并提供双星的参数估计，如质量和旋转速率。引力波天体物理学为激励和教育所有年龄段的学生提供了令人兴奋的机会，加强了美国中学生和大学生的多样性和竞争力，提高了公众的科学素养。通过该奖项开发的计算方法可转移到许多科学和技术领域。这个奖项直接支持了高级LIGO探测中子星和黑洞合并产生的引力波的任务。黑洞和中子星是自然界最致密的物体，它们的碰撞是基础物理学和天体物理学的变革实验室。紧密物体合并的高相对论速度和强弯曲时空产生引力波，引力波编码了物体碰撞时的属性：它们的质量、距离和旋转速度。这些特性可以用来了解大质量恒星的生存和死亡。该奖项将支持提高先进LIGO紧凑二进制搜索灵敏度的研究，并开发下一代参数测量技术，从观测信号中提取物理。拟议的项目将继续推动科学工作流工具和高通量计算的发展，这将对整个科学界产生广泛的影响。

We have entered a new age of human exploration of the universe: the age of gravitational-wave astronomy. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime that carry information about distant astrophysical objects. The observation of binary black hole mergers by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has confirmed a one-hundred-year-old prediction of Einstein. We can now use gravitational waves to study the universe. Gravitational waves carry information that can tell us what happens when black holes collide, how massive stars die, how heavy elements form, how gravity works, and how the universe evolved. This group will continue the development of data analysis techniques used to extract signal from instrumental noise. In particular, the group's studies concentrate on signals generated by binary systems composed of black holes and/or neutron stars. The new methods accelerate the detection by making efficient use of computer resources available to LIGO and provide estimations of the parameters of the binary such as masses and rates of rotation. Gravitational-wave astrophysics offers exciting opportunities to inspire and educate students of all ages, strengthening both the diversity and competitiveness of U.S. secondary and college students, and improving the scientific literacy of the general public. The computational methods developed through this award are transferable to many areas of science and technology.This award directly supports Advanced LIGO's mission to detect gravitational waves from merging neutron stars and black holes. Black holes and neutron stars are nature's most compact objects and their collisions are a transformative laboratory for fundamental physics and astrophysics. The highly relativistic speeds and strongly-curved spacetimes of compact object mergers generate gravitational waves that encode the properties of the objects as they collide: how massive they are, how far away they are, and how fast they spin. These properties can then be used to understand how massive stars live and die. This award will support research to improve the sensitivity of Advanced LIGO's compact binary searches and develop next-generation parameter-measurement techniques to extract the physics from observed signals. The proposed project will continue to drive the development of scientific workflow tools and high-throughput computing that will have broad impact across the scientific community.