This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The goal of this project is to implement a new computational method to study the properties of gravitational waves generated by black holes. The approach uses techniques for solving Einstein's equations which have been recently developed in collaboration with computational mathematicians and tested on model problems. These techniques will be further developed to serve as a community tool available to the many research groups involved in the computer simulation of black holes collisions.
Waves, such as water, sound and electromagnetic waves, are a prominent feature of physical systems. A revolutionary prediction of Einstein's gravitational theory is that accelerated masses produce gravitational waves, analogous to the way electric charges produce electromagnetic waves. Gravitational waves have only been detected indirectly by the way they deplete energy from two co-orbiting pulsars. A Laser Interferometric Gravity Wave Observatory (LIGO) has recently been constructed that will potentially open up a new form of astronomy by directly detecting these gravitational waves. Computer simulations of black hole collisions can provide the theoretical details which are necessary for the LIGO observatory to tune in on the gravitational signal and monitor the dynamics of the colliding black holes.
