DOCSLIB.ORG

Nobel Lecture: LIGO and Gravitational Waves III*

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nobel Lecture: LIGO and Gravitational Waves III* REVIEWS OF MODERN PHYSICS, VOLUME 90, OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2018 Nobel Lecture: LIGO and gravitational waves III* Kip S. Thorne California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA (published 18 December 2018) DOI: 10.1103/RevModPhys.90.040503 CONTENTS in accepting the Nobel Prize, I regard myself as an icon for the Collaboration. I. Introduction and Overview 1 1 Because this was a collaborative achievement, Rai, Barry and II. Some Early Personal History: 1962–1976 1 III. Sources of Gravitational Waves 3 I have chosen to present a single, unified Nobel Lecture, in IV. Information Carried by Gravitational Waves, and three parts. Although my third part may be somewhat com- Computation of Gravitational Waveforms 5 prehensible without the other two, readers can only fully A. Observables from a compact binary’s inspiral waves 5 understand our Collaboration’s achievement, how it came to B. Post-Newtonian approximation for computing inspiral be, and where it is leading, by reading all three parts. Our three- waveforms 5 part written lecture is a detailed expansion of the lecture we C. Numerical relativity for computing merger waveforms 6 actually delivered in Stockholm on December 8, 2017. D. Geometrodynamics in BBH mergers 9 In Part 1 of this written lecture, Rai describes Einstein’s V. Theorists’ Contributions to Understanding and Controlling prediction of gravitational waves, and the experimental effort, Noise in the LIGO Interferometers 11 from the 1960s to 1994, that underpins our discovery of A. Scattered-light noise 11 gravitational waves. In Part 2, Barry describes the experi- B. Gravitational noise 11 mental effort from 1994 up to the present (including our first C. Thermal noise 11 observation of the waves), and describes what we may expect D. Quantum noise and the standard quantum limit for a as the current LIGO detectors reach their design sensitivity in gravitational interferometer 11 about 2020 and then are improved beyond that. In my Part 3, E. Quantum fluctuations, quantum nondemolition, and I describe the role of theorists and theory in LIGO’s success, squeezed vacuum 13 VI. The Future: Four Gravitational Frequency Bands 14 and where I expect gravitational-wave astronomy, in four A. LISA: The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna 14 different frequency bands, to take us over the next several B. PTAs: Pulsar timing arrays 15 decades. But first, I will make some personal remarks about C. CMB polarization 15 the early history of our joint experimental/theoretical quest to VII. The Future: Probing the Universe with Gravitational open the first gravitational-wave window onto the universe. Waves 16 A. Multi-messenger astronomy 16 II. SOME EARLY PERSONAL HISTORY: 1962–19761 B. Exploring black holes and geometrodynamics with gravitational waves 16 I fell in love with relativity when I was a teenage boy C. Exploring the first one second of our Universe’s life 17 growing up in Logan, Utah, so it was inevitable that I would VIII. Conclusion 18 go to Princeton University for graduate school and study Acknowledgments 18 under the great guru of relativity, John Archibald Wheeler. References 18 I arrived at Princeton in autumn 1962, completed my Ph.D. in spring 1965, and stayed on for one postdoctoral year. At I. INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW Princeton, Wheeler inspired me about black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves: relativistic concepts for which The first observation of gravitational waves, by LIGO on there was not yet any observational evidence; and Robert September 14, 2015, was the culmination of a near half Dicke inspired and educated me about experimental physics, ∼1200 century effort by scientists and engineers of the LIGO/ and especially experiments to test Einstein’s relativity theory. Virgo Collaboration. It was also the remarkable beginning In the summer of 1963 I attended an eight-week summer of a whole new way to observe the universe: gravitational school on general relativity at the École d’Ét´e de Physique astronomy. Theorique in Les Houches, France. There I was exposed to the “ ” The Nobel Prize for decisive contributions to this triumph elegant mathematical theory of gravitational waves in lectures was awarded to only three members of the Collaboration: by Ray Sachs, and to gravitational-wave experiment in Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and me. But, in fact, it is the entire lectures by Joe Weber. Those lectures and Wheeler’s influ- collaboration that deserves the primary credit. For this reason, ence, together with conversations I had with Weber while hiking in the surrounding Alpine mountains, got me hooked *The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics was shared by Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne. These papers are the text of the 1For greater personal detail that feeds into this lecture, see my address given in conjunction with the award. Nobel Biography. 0034-6861=2018=90(4)=040503(20) 040503-1 © 2018 Nobel Foundation, Published by the American Physical Society Kip S. Thorne: Nobel Lecture: LIGO and gravitational waves III FIG. 1. John Wheeler, Robert Dicke, and Joseph Weber. Credit: Wheeler: AIP Emilio Segr`e Visual Archives, Wheeler Collection. Dicke: Department of Physics, Princeton University. Weber: AIP Emilio Segr`e Visual Archives. on gravitational waves as a potential research direction. So it • Astrophysical electromagnetic waves are all too easily was inevitable that in 1966, when I moved from Princeton to absorbed and scattered by matter between their source Caltech and began building a research group of six graduate and Earth. Gravitational waves are never significantly students and three postdocs, I focused my group on black absorbed or scattered by matter, even when emitted in the holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves. earliest moments of the Universe’s life. My group’s gravitational-wave research initially was quite These huge differences implied, it seemed to me, that theoretical. We focused on gravitational radiation reaction • Many gravitational-wave sources will not be seen (whether and how gravitational waves kick back at their source, electromagnetically. like a gun kicks back when firing a bullet). More importantly, • Just as each new electromagnetic frequency band (or we developed new ways of computing, accurately, the details of “window”) when opened—radio waves, X-rays, gamma the gravitational waves emitted by astrophysical sources such rays, …—had brought great surprises due to the differ- as spinning, deformed neutron stars, pulsating neutron stars, ence between that band and others, so gravitational and pulsating black holes. Most importantly (relying not only waves with their far greater difference from electromag- on our own group’s work but also on the work of colleagues netic waves are likely to bring even greater surprises. elsewhere) we began to develop a vision for the future of • Indeed, gravitational astronomy has the potential to gravitational-wave astronomy: What would be the frequency revolutionize our understanding of the universe. bands in which observations could be made, what might be the In 1972, while Bill Press and I were writing our first vision strongest sources of gravitational waves in each band, and what paper, Rai Weiss at MITwas writing one of the most remarkable information might be extractable from the sources’ waves. We and prescient papers I have ever read (Weiss, 1972). It proposed described this evolving vision in a series of review articles, an L-shaped laser interferometer gravitational-wave detector beginning with one by my student Bill Press and me in 1972 (gravitational interferometer) with free swinging mirrors, whose (Press and Thorne, 1972) and continuing onward every few oscillating separations would be measured via laser interferom- years until 2001 (Cutler and Thorne, 2002) when, with etry. The bare-bones idea for such a device had been proposed colleagues, I wrote the scientific case for the Advanced- earlier and independently by Michael Gertsenshtein and LIGO gravitational-wave interferometers (Thorne et al., 2001). Vladislav Pustovoit in Moscow (Gertsenshtein and Pustovoit, Particularly important to our evolving vision was the 1963), but Weiss and only Weiss identified the most serious extreme difference between the electromagnetic waves with noise sources that it would have to face, described ways to which astronomers then studied the universe, and the expected deal with each one, and estimated the resulting sensitivity to astrophysical gravitational waves: gravitational waves. Comparing with estimated wave strengths • Electromagnetic waves (light, radio waves, X-rays, from astrophysical sources, Rai concluded that such an inter- gamma rays, …) are oscillating electric and magnetic ferometer with kilometer-scale arm lengths had a real possibility fields that propagate through spacetime. Gravitational to discover gravitational waves. (This is why I regard Rai as the waves, by contrast, are oscillations of the “fabric” or primary inventor of gravitational interferometers.) shape of spacetime itself. The physical character of the Rai, being Rai, did not publish his remarkable paper in a waves could not be more different! normal physics journal. He thought one should not publish • Electromagnetic waves from astrophysical sources are until after building the interferometer and finding gravitational almost always incoherent superpositions of emission waves, so instead he put his paper in an internal MIT report produced by individual charged particles, atoms, or series, but provided copies to colleagues. molecules.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Phase Transitions and Gravitational Wave Tests of Pseudo-Goldstone Dark Matter in the Softly Broken Uð1þ Scalar Singlet Model
    PHYSICAL REVIEW D 99, 115010 (2019) Phase transitions and gravitational wave tests of pseudo-Goldstone dark matter in the softly broken Uð1Þ scalar singlet model † Kristjan Kannike* and Martti Raidal National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics, Rävala 10, Tallinn 10143, Estonia (Received 26 February 2019; published 10 June 2019) We study phase transitions in a softly broken Uð1Þ complex singlet scalar model in which the dark matter is the pseudoscalar part of a singlet whose direct detection coupling to matter is strongly suppressed. Our aim is to find ways to test this model with the stochastic gravitational wave background from the scalar phase transition. We find that the phase transition which induces vacuum expectation values for both the Higgs boson and the singlet—necessary to provide a realistic dark matter candidate—is always of the second order. If the stochastic gravitational wave background characteristic to a first order phase transition will be discovered by interferometers, the soft breaking of Uð1Þ cannot be the explanation to the suppressed dark matter-baryon coupling, providing a conclusive negative test for this class of singlet models. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.99.115010 I. INTRODUCTION Is there any other way to test the softly broken Uð1Þ Scalar singlet is one of the most generic candidates for singlet DM model experimentally and to distinguish the the dark matter (DM) of the Universe [1,2], whose proper- particular model from more general versions of singlet scalar ties have been exhaustively studied [3–6] (see [7,8] for a DM? A new probe of physics beyond the Standard Model recent review and references).
    [Show full text]
  • Observing Primordial Gravitational Waves Below the Binary-Black-Hole-Produced Stochastic Background
    Digging Deeper: Observing Primordial Gravitational Waves below the Binary-Black-Hole-Produced Stochastic Background The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Regimbau, T. et al. “Digging Deeper: Observing Primordial Gravitational Waves below the Binary-Black-Hole-Produced Stochastic Background.” Physical Review Letters 118.15 (2017): n. pag. © 2017 American Physical Society As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.151105 Publisher American Physical Society Version Final published version Citable link http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/108853 Terms of Use Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. week ending PRL 118, 151105 (2017) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 14 APRIL 2017 Digging Deeper: Observing Primordial Gravitational Waves below the Binary-Black-Hole-Produced Stochastic Background † ‡ T. Regimbau,1,* M. Evans,2 N. Christensen,1,3, E. Katsavounidis,2 B. Sathyaprakash,4, and S. Vitale2 1Artemis, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, CS 34229, Nice cedex 4, France 2LIGO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA 3Physics and Astronomy, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota 55057, USA 4Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA and School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, United Kingdom (Received 25 November 2016; revised manuscript received 9 February 2017; published 14 April 2017) The merger rate of black hole binaries inferred from the detections in the first Advanced LIGO science run implies that a stochastic background produced by a cosmological population of mergers will likely mask the primordial gravitational wave background.
    [Show full text]
  • Observational Signatures from Tidal Disruption Events of White Dwarfs
    Doctoral Dissertation 博士論文 Observational signatures from tidal disruption events of white dwarfs (白色矮星の潮汐破壊現象からの観測兆候) A Dissertation Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2020 令和 2 年 12 月 博士（理学）申請 Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo 東京大学大学院理学系研究科物理学専攻 Kojiro Kawana 川名 好史朗 i Abstract Recent advances in optical surveys have yielded a large sample of astronomical transients, including classically known novae and supernovae (SNe) and also newly discovered classes of transients. Among them, tidal disruption events (TDEs) have a unique feature that they can probe massive black holes (MBHs). A TDE is an event where a star approaching close to a BH is disrupted by tides of the BH. The disrupted star leaves debris bound to the BH emitting multi-wavelength and multi-messenger signals, which are observed as a transient. The observational signatures of TDEs bring us insights into physical processes around the BH, such as dynamics in the general relativistic gravity, accretion physics, and environmental information around BHs. Event rates of TDEs also inform us of populations of BHs. A large number of BHs have been detected, but still there are big mysteries. The most mysterious BHs are intermediate mass BHs (IMBHs) because they are a missing link: there is almost no certain evidence of IMBHs, while there are many detections of stellar mass BHs and supermassive BHs (SMBHs). Searches for IMBHs are not only important to reveal mysteries of IMBHs themselves, but also to understand origin(s) of SMBHs. Several scenarios to form SMBHs have been proposed, but it is still unclear which scenario(s) are real in the Universe.
    [Show full text]
  • Stochastic Gravitational Wave Backgrounds
    Stochastic Gravitational Wave Backgrounds Nelson Christensen1;2 z 1ARTEMIS, Universit´eC^oted'Azur, Observatoire C^oted'Azur, CNRS, 06304 Nice, France 2Physics and Astronomy, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057, USA Abstract. A stochastic background of gravitational waves can be created by the superposition of a large number of independent sources. The physical processes occurring at the earliest moments of the universe certainly created a stochastic background that exists, at some level, today. This is analogous to the cosmic microwave background, which is an electromagnetic record of the early universe. The recent observations of gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors imply that there is also a stochastic background that has been created by binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers over the history of the universe. Whether the stochastic background is observed directly, or upper limits placed on it in specific frequency bands, important astrophysical and cosmological statements about it can be made. This review will summarize the current state of research of the stochastic background, from the sources of these gravitational waves, to the current methods used to observe them. Keywords: stochastic gravitational wave background, cosmology, gravitational waves 1. Introduction Gravitational waves are a prediction of Albert Einstein from 1916 [1,2], a consequence of general relativity [3]. Just as an accelerated electric charge will create electromagnetic waves (light), accelerating mass will create gravitational waves. And almost exactly arXiv:1811.08797v1 [gr-qc] 21 Nov 2018 a century after their prediction, gravitational waves were directly observed [4] for the first time by Advanced LIGO [5, 6].
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:2104.05033V2 [Gr-Qc] 2 May 2021 Academy of Science, Beijing, China, 100190; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei- Jing 100049, China
    Mission Design for the TAIJI misson and Structure Formation in Early Universe Xuefei Gong, Shengnian Xu,Shanquan Gui, Shuanglin Huang and Yun-Kau Lau ∗ Abstract Gravitational wave detection in space promises to open a new window in astronomy to study the strong field dynamics of gravitational physics in astro- physics and cosmology. The present article is an extract of a report on a feasibility study of gravitational wave detection in space, commissioned by the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences almost a decade ago. The objective of the study was to explore various possible mission options to detect gravitational waves in space alternative to that of the (e)LISA mission concept and look into the requirements on the technological fronts. On the basis of relative merits and bal- ance between science and technological feasibility, a set of representative mission options were studied and in the end a mission design was recommended as the start- ing point for research and development in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Xuefei Gong Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academy of Mathematics and System Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China, 100190. e-mail: [email protected] Shengnian Xu Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academy of Mathematics and System Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China, 100190. e-mail: [email protected] Shanquan Gui School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China; Depart- ment of Astronomy, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. e-mail: [email protected]. Shuanglin Huang Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academy of Mathematics and System Science, Chinese arXiv:2104.05033v2 [gr-qc] 2 May 2021 Academy of Science, Beijing, China, 100190; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei- jing 100049, China.
    [Show full text]
  • Toroidal Event Horizons and Other Relativistic Ray Tracing Adventures
    Toroidal event horizons and other relativistic ray tracing adventures ADissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Andrew Douglas Bohn August 2016 c 2016 Andrew Douglas Bohn This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ TOROIDAL EVENT HORIZONS AND OTHER RELATIVISTIC RAY TRACING ADVENTURES Andrew Douglas Bohn, Ph.D. Cornell University 2016 This thesis deals with the appearance of colliding black holes from two vantage points, dividing the thesis into two parts. Part I (Chapters 2 to 4)investigatesthetopologyofmergingblackholeeventhorizons. Chapter 2 introduces a new code for locating event horizons in numerical simulations. The code can automatically refine arbitrary regions of the event horizon surface to find features such as the hole in a toroidal event horizon. With these tools, Chapter 3 shows the first binary black hole event horizon with a toroidal topology. It had been predicted that generically the event horizons of merging black holes should briefly have a toroidal topology, but such a phase has not been seen prior to this work. In all previous binary black hole simulations, in the coordinate slicing used to evolve the black holes, the topology of the event horizon transitions directly from two spheres during the inspiral to a single sphere as the black holes merge. Chapter 3 presents a transformation of the time coordinate that results in a toroidal event horizon. A torus could potentially provide a mechanism for violating the so-called topological censorship theorem; however, since these toroidal event horizons arise from a coordinate choice, they can be removed by the inverse coordinate transformation and do not violate the theorem.
    [Show full text]
  • Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves Can Measure the Time Variation of the Planck Mass
    Direct detection of gravitational waves can measure the time variation of the Planck mass Luca Amendola,1 Ignacy Sawicki,2 Martin Kunz,3 and Ippocratis D. Saltas2 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 16, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany 2CEICO, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Praha 8, Czechia 3Départment de Physique Théorique and Center for Astroparticle Physics, Université de Genève, Quai E. Ansermet 24, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland The recent discovery of a γ-ray counterpart to a gravitational wave event has put extremely stringent constraints on the speed of gravitational waves at the present epoch. In turn, these constraints place strong theoretical pressure on potential modifications of gravity, essentially allowing only a conformally-coupled scalar to be active in the present Universe. In this paper, we show that direct detection of gravitational waves from optically identified sources can also measure or constrain the strength of the conformal coupling in scalar–tensor models through the time variation of the Planck mass. As a first rough estimate, we find that the LISA satellite can measure the dimensionless time variation of the Planck mass (the so-called parameter αM ) at redshift around 1.5 with an error of about 0.03 to 0.13, depending on the assumptions concerning future observations. Stronger constraints can be achieved once reliable distance indicators at z > 2 are developed, or with GW detectors that extend the capabilities of LISA, like the proposed Big Bang Observer. We emphasize that, just like the constraints on the gravitational speed, the bound on αM is independent of the cosmological model.
    [Show full text]
  • Stochastic Gravitational Wave Backgrounds
    IOP Reports on Progress in Physics Reports on Progress in Physics Rep. Prog. Phys. Rep. Prog. Phys. 82 (2019) 016903 (30pp) https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6633/aae6b5 82 Review 2019 Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd Nelson Christensen RPPHAG ARTEMIS, Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, CNRS, 06304 Nice, France Physics and Astronomy, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057, United States of America 016903 E-mail: [email protected] N Christensen Received 21 December 2016, revised 26 September 2018 Accepted for publication 8 October 2018 Published 21 November 2018 Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds Corresponding Editor Dr Beverly K Berger Printed in the UK Abstract A stochastic background of gravitational waves could be created by the superposition of ROP a large number of independent sources. The physical processes occurring at the earliest moments of the universe certainly created a stochastic background that exists, at some level, today. This is analogous to the cosmic microwave background, which is an electromagnetic 10.1088/1361-6633/aae6b5 record of the early universe. The recent observations of gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors imply that there is also a stochastic background that 1361-6633 has been created by binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers over the history of the universe. Whether the stochastic background is observed directly, or upper limits placed on it in specific frequency bands, important astrophysical and cosmological statements about 1 it can be made. This review will summarize the current state of research of the stochastic background, from the sources of these gravitational waves to the current methods used to observe them.
    [Show full text]
  • Gravitational Waves (UK)
    Gravitational Waves (UK) T. J. Sumner Imperial College London University of Florida European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 1 European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 2 Colpi & Sesana arXiv:1610.05309 European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 3 Gravitational Wave Astronomy UK GW effort • UK: Long history of leadership in GW instrumentation and analysis; • UK made major contributions to Advanced LIGO and LISA Pathfinder (enabling hardware, innovative ideas, leading search groups and analysis • Faculty expansion in Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff (new experimental group), Portsmouth (new group) Latest science operations • Adv. LIGO completed 2nd run (O2: Nov 2016 – Aug 2017) • Adv. Virgo joined network in Aug 2017, allowing localisation of sources via triangulation • LISA Pathfinder completed main mission and one extension (May 2016 – July 2017) European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 4 European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 5 European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 6 European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 7 Abbott, B et al., PRL, 119, 141101 (2017) European Particle Physics Strategy Input, Durham 18/04/2018 8 Science Highlights • A new class of high-mass black-hole binary • ‘Standard’ GR template provides good fit • Masses of progenitor BHs (~15%) • Mass of final BH (~10%) • Final mass spin (~10%) • Energy loss (~15%) • Distance (~30%) – NO COUNTERPARTS • Power output (~25%) • 12-213 BH-BH mergers Gpc-3/year
    [Show full text]
  • National Science Foundation LIGO BIOS
    BIOS France Córdova is 14th director of the National Science Foundation. Córdova leads the only government agency charged with advancing all fields of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and STEM education. Córdova has a distinguished resume, including: chair of the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents; president emerita of Purdue University; chancellor of the University of California, Riverside; vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara; NASA’s chief scientist; head of the astronomy and astrophysics department at Penn State; and deputy group leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. Gabriela González is spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. She completed her PhD at Syracuse University in 1995, then worked as a staff scientist in the LIGO group at MIT until 1997, when she joined the faculty at Penn State. In 2001, she joined the faculty at Louisiana State University, where she is a professor of physics and astronomy. The González group’s current research focuses on characterization of the LIGO detector noise, detector calibration, and searching for gravitational waves in the data. In 2007, she was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society for her experimental contributions to the field of gravitational wave detection, her leadership in the analysis of LIGO data for gravitational wave signals, and for her skill in communicating the excitement of physics to students and the public. David Reitze is executive director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech. In 1990, he completed his PhD at the University of Texas, Austin, where his research focused on ultrafast laser-matter interactions.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae Scott E. Field
    1 CURRICULUM VITAE SCOTT E. FIELD Department of Mathematics Phone: 508.999.8318 University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Email: sfi[email protected] LARTS{394C www.math.umassd.edu/~sfield/ Dartmouth, Massachusetts 02747, USA HIGHER EDUCATION Graduate: Brown University, Providence RI Physics M.Sc., 2010. Physics Ph.D, 2011. Advisor: Professor Jan S. Hesthaven, Division of Applied Mathematics. Dissertation: Applications of Discontinuous Galerkin Methods to Computational Relativity. Undergraduate: University of Rochester, Rochester NY Mathematics B.S., 2006. Physics B.S., 2006. Advisor: Professor Arie Bodek, Department of Physics. TEACHING & OTHER EXPERIENCE 1. Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Massachusetts Dart- mouth (9/2016 - ) 2. Co-director & Graduate Program Director, Data Science, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (10/2017 - ) 3. Adjunct Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (7/2017 - 7/2018) 4. Visiting Scientist, Cornell Center for Astrophysics (9/2016 - 8/2017) 5. Research Associate, Department of Astronomy, Cornell University (9/2014 - 9/2016) 6. Lecturer, Department of Physics, Cornell University (1/2015 - 5/2015) 7. Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics, University of Maryland (8/2011 - 8/2014) 8. NASA Goddard-UMD Joint Space-Science Institute Prize Postdoctoral Fellow (8/2011 - 8/2014) 9. Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, University of Maryland (8/2011 - 8/2014) 2 Courses taught at UMass Dartmouth: 1. Data Science Capstone, DSC 498 (Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2021) 2. Graduate Internship, EGR 500 (Summer 2020, Fall 2021) 3. Introduction to Scientific Computation, MTH 280. (Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021) 4. Data Science Capstone, DSC 499 (Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021) 5.
    [Show full text]
  • The Future of Gravitational Wave Astronomy a Global Plan
    THE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ROADMAP The future of gravitational wave astronomy GWIC A global plan Title page: Numerical simulation of merging black holes The search for gravitational waves requires detailed knowledge of the expected signals. Scientists of the Albert Einstein Institute's numerical relativity group simulate collisions of black holes and neutron stars on supercomputers using sophisticated codes developed at the institute. These simulations provide insights into the possible structure of gravitational wave signals. Gravitational waves are so weak that these computations significantly increase the proba- bility of identifying gravitational waves in the data acquired by the detectors. Numerical simulation: C. Reisswig, L. Rezzolla (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)) Scientific visualisation: M. Koppitz (Zuse Institute Berlin) GWIC THE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ROADMAP The future of gravitational wave astronomy June 2010 Updates will be announced on the GWIC webpage: https://gwic.ligo.org/ 3 CONTENT Executive Summary Introduction 8 Science goals 9 Ground-based, higher-frequency detectors 11 Space-based and lower-frequency detectors 12 Theory, data analysis and astrophysical model building 15 Outreach and interaction with other fields 17 Technology development 17 Priorities 18 1. Introduction 21 2. Introduction to gravitational wave science 23 2.1 Introduction 23 2.2 What are gravitational waves? 23 2.2.1 Gravitational radiation 23 2.2.2 Polarization 24 2.2.3 Expected amplitudes from typical sources 24 2.3 The use of gravitational waves to test general relativity 26 and other physics topics: relevance for fundamental physics 2.4 Doing astrophysics/astronomy/cosmology 27 with gravitational waves 2.4.1 Relativistic astrophysics 27 2.4.2 Cosmology 28 2.5 General background reading relevant to this chapter 28 3.
    [Show full text]