Modeling Extreme Astrophysical Black Hole Binaries

极端天体物理黑洞双星建模

• 批准号: 1305730
• 负责人: Carlos Lousto
• 金额: $ 52.5万
• 依托单位: Rochester Institute of Tech
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1305730&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Modeling; Extreme; Astrophysical; Black; Hole

Gravitational Wave (GW) Astronomy promises to provide a revolutionary new view of the universe that can probe previously unexplorable regions, including the interiors of neutron stars, collisions of black holes, which emit energy at luminosities exceeding the entire visible universe, and even remnants of the big bang. However, the challenges are significant because the GW signals will be hidden in orders of magnitude larger noise. To gain new insight into the dynamics of the universe, GW astronomers need to be able to infer the nature of the sources from the observed signals. However, the physical parameters of these sources can only be extracted from the observed signals if the dependence of the waveform on source parameters is known to high-accuracy. The success of the GW astronomy efforts therefore depends critically on advancements in Numerical Relativity (NR). This award funds the well-established research program at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) to model merging black hole binaries in the highly-nonlinear regime, which are among the loudest sources for aLIGO/AdVirgo. We focus on binaries in the technically difficult small-mass-ratio, highly-spinning, and highly-precessing regimes, which requires new developments in code optimization, new gauge conditions (especially gauge conditions adapted for the high-spin regime), non-conformally flat initial data for high spins and linear momentum, as well as hybrid numerical/perturbative techniques that will allow us to model a large range of binaries using relatively few numerical simulations. Our principle goals will be to produce waveforms from these extreme binaries of sufficient accuracy for aLIGO/AdVirgo GW data analysis, and to model the gravitational radiation recoil (as well as remnant mass and spins) from highly-precessing binaries in order to elucidate the distributions of these recoils and how they affect the distribution and growth of supermassive black holes. This research is very timely now that aLIGO is scheduled to come online in 2015. Our research will directly benefit the aLIGO/AdVirgo project, the NINJA and NRAR projects, and an emerging new field in astrophysics: The search for the observational consequences of merging and recoiling black holes. The research proposed here will complement other ongoing projects of our NR group to include matter and magnetic fields in our vacuum general relativistic code in order to study EM counterparts to compact-object mergers and to model accretion disk dynamics near supermassive black holes. This award will not only enable the PIs to enhance their research program, but it will also be used to greatly enhance the research effort at RIT as a whole. The award supports graduate student research in RIT's PhD Astronomy program and a proposed new PhD program in 'Modeling and Computation'. Importantly, our research will be the focus of our new partnership with RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf on an NSF-funded project that combines innovative dance and theater performances to promote science to the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities. Visualizations will also be a vehicle for public outreach events on science, mathematics, and computing through site visits and annual community-wide public exhibits like 'ImagineRIT'.

引力波（GW）天文学有望提供一种革命性的宇宙新观点，可以探测以前无法探索的区域，包括中子星的内部、黑洞的碰撞（其发射的能量超过整个可见宇宙的光度），甚至是黑洞的残余物。大爆炸。然而，挑战是巨大的，因为引力波信号将隐藏在大几个数量级的噪声中。 为了获得对宇宙动力学的新见解，引力波天文学家需要能够从观测到的信号推断来源的性质。 然而，如果波形对源参数的依赖性是高精度的，则只能从观测信号中提取这些源的物理参数。因此，GW 天文学工作的成功关键取决于数值相对论（NR）的进步。该奖项资助罗彻斯特理工学院 (RIT) 完善的研究项目，该项目旨在对高度非线性状态下的合并黑洞双星进行建模，这些双星系统是 aLIGO/AdVirgo 的最大声源之一。我们专注于技术上困难的小质量比、高自旋和高加工状态下的双星，这需要代码优化、新规范条件（特别是适合高自旋状态的规范条件）、非-高自旋和线性动量的共形平坦初始数据，以及混合数值/微扰技术，使我们能够使用相对较少的数值模拟来模拟大范围的双星系统。我们的主要目标是从这些极端双星中产生足够精度的波形，用于 aLIGO/AdVirgo GW 数据分析，并对高度处理双星的引力辐射反冲（以及残余质量和自旋）进行建模，以阐明分布这些反冲力以及它们如何影响超大质量黑洞的分布和生长。 这项研究非常及时，因为 aLIGO 计划于 2015 年上线。我们的研究将直接有益于 aLIGO/AdVirgo 项目、NINJA 和 NRAR 项目以及天体物理学中一个新兴的新领域：寻找合并和融合的观测结果。反冲黑洞。这里提出的研究将补充我们 NR 小组正在进行的其他项目，将物质和磁场纳入我们的真空广义相对论代码中，以便研究致密物体合并的电磁对应物，并模拟超大质量黑洞附近的吸积盘动力学。该奖项不仅将使 PI 能够加强他们的研究项目，而且还将用于极大地增强 RIT 的整体研究工作。该奖项支持 RIT 天文学博士项目的研究生研究以及拟议的“建模与计算”新博士项目。重要的是，我们的研究将成为我们与 RIT 国家聋人技术研究所新合作的重点，该项目由 NSF 资助，该项目结合了创新的舞蹈和戏剧表演，向聋人和听力障碍社区推广科学。可视化也将成为通过实地考察和年度社区公共展览（如“ImagineRIT”）进行科学、数学和计算公共宣传活动的工具。