Testing General Relativity with Gravitational Wave Observations

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”大理念的优先领域。在过去的二十年里，观测宇宙学中出现了复杂的问题，这些问题根本不会消失：宇宙的加速膨胀，哈勃常数的局部和早期宇宙时代测量之间的紧张关系，以及暗物质的未检测到是物理学危机的主要例子。 由于人们不知道问题可能在哪里，因此正在作出大量努力以更好地理解这些问题。 修正的引力理论被认为是一种可能的解决方案。同样，广义相对论中的概念问题需要从各种不同的方法来观察，才能成功。该奖项将以与其他测试（例如黑洞无毛测试）互补的方式测试广义相对论，并探测引力的强场状态，充分利用信号。这些测试将检测广义相对论的违反或限制某些已被引用来解释上述宇宙学问题的引力修正理论。广义相对论在解释当前的天文观测和实验室实验方面是一个非常成功的理论。尽管如此，人们普遍认为，这个理论充其量是不完整的，代表着一个更完整的理论的近似，可以解决它的部分或全部问题。这项资助支持的工作是采取双管齐下的方法来探索广义相对论违反：1。测量观测到的辐射的多极结构，以检验广义相对论的自洽性。2.一种不相干的时频检验，用于检查在不同多极中观测到的信号功率与广义相对论预测的一致性。这些测试将在两个重要方面改进目前的方法。首先，对于具有大质量不对称性（m1/m22）和轨道倾角大于30度的双星，可以预期在高阶多极子中有可观的信号功率。其次，通过在分析中使用完整的吸气合并振铃信号，提高了更高模式下的信噪比。该奖项反映了NSF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. The past two decades have witnessed compounding problems in observational cosmology that simply don’t go away: the accelerated expansion of the Universe, tension between the local and early Universe epoch measurements of the Hubble constant, and non-detection of dark matter are prime examples of crises in physics. A multitude of effort is being made to better understand these problems as one does not know where the problem might be. Modified gravity theories are seen as one possible solution. Likewise, conceptual problems in general relativity need to be examined observationally from a variety of different approaches to be successful. This award will test general relativity in ways complementary to other tests (e.g. the black hole no-hair test) and probe the strong-field regime of gravity, making the full use of the signal. These tests will either detect violation of general relativity or constrain certain modified theories of gravity that have been invoked to explain the aforementioned cosmological problems.General Relativity has been a tremendously successful theory in explaining current astronomical observations and laboratory experiments. Nevertheless, there is a general consensus that the theory is at best incomplete, representing an approximation to a more complete theory that cures some or all of its problems. The work supported by this grant is takes a two-pronged approach to explore general relativistic violations: 1. Measure the multipolar structure of the observed radiation to test for self-consistency of general relativity. 2. An incoherent, time-frequency test that checks for consistency of the observed signal-power in different multipoles with the predictions of general relativity. The tests will improve upon the current approach in two significant ways. Firstly, for binaries with large mass asymmetry (m1/m22) and orbital inclinations more than 30 degrees one can expect appreciable signal power in higher order multipoles. Secondly, by making use of the full inspiral-merger-ringdown signal in the analysis increases the signal-to-noise ratio in higher modes.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.