RUI: Next-Generation Numerical Relativity for Future Gravitational-Wave Observatories

该奖项支持相对论和相对论天体物理学的研究，并阐述了美国国家科学基金会“宇宙之窗”大构想的优先领域。引力波是扭曲的时空的涟漪，以光速在宇宙中传播。它们是由宇宙中最具灾难性的事件释放出来的，例如碰撞的黑洞和中子星。今天的引力波观测站给了人类一种全新的感觉来了解宇宙，但它们的灵敏度只够探测到最大的引力波。下一代引力波探测器将到达可观测宇宙的边缘，并将以极高的保真度观测最大的引力波。该奖项将帮助科学家从这些高保真观测中恢复最令人兴奋和令人惊讶的物理学。具体地说，该奖项支持一个研究项目，该项目使用超级计算机计算来模拟合并黑洞产生的引力波。通过参与这一项目，加州州立大学富勒顿分校的本科生和硕士研究生将在引力波天文学方面发挥重要作用，同时学习研究和计算技能，为他们在STEM职业生涯中的成功做好准备。PI和学生研究人员将把这项工作的成果整合到一个为期一周的研讨会中；研讨会将向来自柑橘学院(一家当地的西班牙裔社区学院)的学生介绍引力波、高性能计算和本科生研究。该奖项重申了对加州州立大学的支持，富勒顿的计算引力波研究项目。PI和本科生和硕士学生作为模拟极端时空合作的成员，将在准备将数值相对论建模应用于下一代引力波观测方面发挥关键作用。首先，他们将评估光谱爱因斯坦代码(SPEC)的精度和性能限制，这是一种最先进的数值相对论代码，以确定它能否很好地模拟未来探测器最响亮的观测结果，这些观测结果的信噪比(SNR)将达到数千。其次，他们将探索SPECTE的潜力，这是一种新一代、开源的数值相对论代码，用于模拟合并黑洞的高信噪比观测。他们将完成对SPECTRE的精确度、效率和比例的首次评估，同时为SPECTE首次模拟双黑洞做出贡献。这项工作产生的高精度模型引力波形将有助于发展改进的解析近似模型，这是推断引力波源性质和在最极端条件下检验广义相对论所必需的。这项工作还将揭示下一代技术模拟合并黑洞的潜力，同时为使用它们模拟撕裂中子星的黑洞奠定基础。对这些事件的高保真观测将以前所未有的保真度揭示宇宙中最密集的物质和最强烈扭曲的时空的行为-但它们将需要精度大大提高的模型波形。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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. Gravitational waves are ripples of warped spacetime that travel through the universe at the speed of light. They are emitted by the most cataclysmic events in the universe, such as colliding black holes and neutron stars. Today's gravitational-wave observatories have given humanity an entirely new sense to learn about the universe, but they are only sensitive enough to detect the loudest gravitational waves. The next generation of gravitational-wave detectors will reach to the edge of the observable universe and will observe the loudest gravitational waves with extremely high fidelity. This award will help scientists recover the most exciting and surprising physics from these high-fidelity observations. Specifically, this award supports a research program that uses supercomputer calculations to model gravitational waves from merging black holes. Through their participation in this project, undergraduate and master's students at California State University, Fullerton, a Hispanic-serving institution, will play important roles in gravitational-wave astronomy while learning research and computational skills that will prepare them for successful STEM careers. The PI and student researchers will integrate results from this work into a week-long workshop; the workshop will introduce students from Citrus College (a local Hispanic-serving community college) to gravitational waves, high-performance computing, and undergraduate research.This award renews support for California State University, Fullerton's computational gravitational-wave research program. The PI and students at the undergraduate and master's level, working as members of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes collaboration, will play key roles in preparing for the application of numerical-relativity modeling to next-generation gravitational-wave observations. First, they will assess the accuracy and performance limits of the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC), a state-of-the-art numerical-relativity code, to determine how well it can model future detectors' loudest observations, which will have signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in the thousands. Second, they will explore the potential for SpECTRE, a next-generation, open-source numerical-relativity code, to model high-SNR observations of merging black holes. They will complete the first assessment of SpECTRE's accuracy, efficiency, and scaling while contributing toward enabling SpECTRE's first simulations of binary black holes. The high-accuracy model gravitational waveforms resulting from this work will help develop improved analytic approximate models necessary for inferring the properties of gravitational-wave sources and for testing general relativity under the most extreme conditions. This work will also reveal the potential of next-generation techniques to model merging black holes while laying a foundation for using them to model black holes tearing apart neutron stars. High-fidelity observations of these events will reveal, with unprecedented fidelity, the behavior of the universe's densest matter and most strongly warped spacetime—but they will require model waveforms with tremendously improved accuracy.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.