Thorne, Kip AST 97-31698 Dr. Thorne will carry out a program of theoretical research addressing issues in the generation of gravitational waves by astrophysical objects and in relativistic astrophysics. The gravitational wave research, which makes up the majority of the research program, will focus on waves detectable by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). Thorne and his research group will identify what wave-generation computations are needed for LIGO and will carry out some of these computations, and give advice on others to other researchers. Thorne's work is particularly concerned with waves produced by the inspiral and merger of binary systems made of black holes, neutron stars, and hypothetical compact objects, such as boson stars, soliton stars, and naked singularities. The calculations will produce detailed, high-accuracy waveforms, computed by solving the Einstein field equations for the binaries' inspiral, merger, and ringdown, which will provide guidance for the search and extraction of information from LIGO data. ***
