CAREER: Beyond Gravitational Wave Detection

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support an integrated program of teaching and research designed to educate scientists in the fundamentals of gravitational-wave (GW) sources and measurement. Three major components will comprise this program: (1) The design of a new course in GW science focusing largely on the astrophysics of GW sources. This course will be made accessible to the community via MIT's OpenCourseWare Initiative (http://web.mit.edu/ocw). (2) The production of a publicly accessible catalog presenting the "sounds" of various GW sources. Such sounds have been demonstrated to very effectively illustrate the principles of GW science, both to technical audiences and more broadly. Audio encodings of GW science will be coupled to source dynamical visualizations where possible. Much of this work will be done by undergraduate students at MIT. (3) A research program in GW source science and measurement. This program will focus in particular on studies of radiation emission from binary systems; a formalism for mapping the characteristics of massive black holes; and the astronomy that can be done with networks of ground-based GW detectors. The bulk of the work in these research projects will be performed by graduate students. This work will help ensure that GW detectors reach their full potential as GW observatories, opening a new field of observational astronomy. The course that will be developed will help educate the young scientists who will work with these new instruments in the coming years; the catalog of sounds and visualizations will serve to inform the broader scientific community about the promise of GW science, as well as serve as an effective public outreach tool.