This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project continues the development of the numerical codes necessary to simulate the merger of two neutron stars or two black holes and the modeling of the gravitational waves generated by these phenomena. In particular, the work concentrates of the study of more realistic physics in the modeling of the neutron stars, including the effects of neutrino radiation and the creation of initial data sets that will include neutron stars with arbitrary spins (in magnitude and orientation). Research on black hole mergers will continue, this time enhanced by a collaboration with the NINJA Group: a large (more than 80 investigators) international effort dedicated to ease the introduction of numerically generated gravitational waveforms into the data analysis pipeline of LIGO and VIRGO.
This work is particularly important in the light of the advent of the new generation of gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO. The possibility of detecting gravitational waves directly has created a new branch of astronomical sciences. Direct detection of these waves will provide unique insights into some of the most fascinating objects in the universe: black holes and neutron stars. Due to the matter that clouds the mergers of neutron stars with black holes or other neutron stars, gravitational waves and neutrino radiation are the only vehicles that can convey information about the last few moments of a binary system, the merger and the creation of a new object (most likely a black hole). Furthermore, this project supports a recently-formed relativity group at a developing research institution, Florida Atlantic University with a culturally diverse student body.
