WoU-MMA: Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves

该奖项支持相对论和相对论天体物理学的研究，并解决了NSF“宇宙之窗”大构想的优先领域。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。黑洞和中子星合并的高相对论速度和强引力场产生的引力波编码了物体碰撞时的属性：它们的质量，它们的距离，以及它们旋转的速度。该项目将利用美国国家科学基金会的激光干涉仪引力波天文台（LIGO）探测到的引力波中编码的信息来了解大质量恒星是如何生存和死亡的，并帮助了解致密物质和原子核的特性。该项目将推动科学工作流工具和高通量计算的发展，在整个科学界产生广泛的影响。学生将接受数据分析和高性能计算工具方面的培训，这将使他们成为21世纪劳动力中有价值的成员。该项目的目标是将致密天体的多信使观测与核理论、基本重力、波形建模和开放数据相结合，以帮助回答引力波天文学中一些最紧迫的问题，并为下一代引力波天文台做好准备。该项目将有助于阐明核密度下物质的状态方程，并探索物质的奇异相，如超子、介子和夸克-胶子等离子体是否存在于中子星的内核中。对引力波源的新搜索将决定我们对致密天体质量和自旋分布的理解是否受到当前对引力波信号搜索的限制，并且可能会发现新的致密天体双星。该项目将利用引力波来探索重力的本质，并约束或确认宇宙中奇异致密物体的存在。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. 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 strong gravitational fields of black hole and neutron star 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 are spinning. This project will use the information encoded in the gravitational waves detected by the National Science Foundation's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to understand how massive stars live and die, and to help understand the properties of dense matter and the atomic nucleus. This project will drive the development of scientific workflow tools and high-throughput computing that have broad impact across the scientific community. Students will be trained in the tools of data analysis and high-performance computing, which will enable them to become valuable members of the 21st century workforce.The goal of this project is to combine multi-messenger observations of compact objects with nuclear theory, fundamental gravity, waveform modeling, and open data to help answer some of the most pressing questions in the gravitational-wave astronomy, and to prepare for the next generation of gravitational-wave observatories. This project will help to elucidate the equation of state of matter at nuclear densities, and explore whether exotic phases of matter, such as hyperons, kaons, and quark-gluon plasmas reside in the inner cores of neutron stars. New searches for gravitational-wave sources will determine if our understanding of the compact-object mass and spin distributions is restricted by the limits of current searches for gravitational-wave signals and, possibly, will discover new classes of compact-object binary. This project will use gravitational waves to explore the nature of gravity and constrain or confirm the existence of exotic compact objects in the universe.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.