NSF Award
0969709
This award supports a program of research aimed at the development of new computer software that will allow researchers simulating the evolution and merger of astronomical systems containing two black holes to identify and characterize the gravitational waves produced in the simulations. Gravitational waves produced in the last moments of binary black hole evolutions are expected to be an important signal for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). Searches of LIGO data for signals of this type can be made more sensitive if more is known about the waveforms to be expected. The proposed software will use the technique of Cauchy-characteristic wave extraction, a method that can analyze the waveforms infinitely far from the source (in effect where LIGO would be). Standard methods could introduce inaccuracies into the extracted waveforms because they require measurement much closer to the source. The developed software will be made available to the broader research community as a module of the Cactus framework. Undergraduates will be supported by this award. The science and methods of this project will form the basis of public lectures by the PI.
