WoU-MMA: Inference About Gravitational Wave Sources and Source Populations in the Era of Perpetual Discovery

The discovery of the first gravitational waves by NSF's Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) began a revolution in understanding of the universe. These gravitational waves are the inevitable consequence of Einstein's model of space and time, General Relativity, which predicts that rapidly accelerating objects will produce ripples in spacetime, carrying unobscured information about the most energetic astrophysical phenomena like colliding black holes or neutron stars. Substantial ongoing investment has allowed the gravitational wave network to increase rapidly in sensitivity, accumulating events that enable the first census of such objects throughout the Universe. This census has identified never before seen systems and physics, challenging theories about how these objects form while enabling transformative multi-messenger science. The hundreds of binary systems that will be detected during LIGO's next observing run provide unique opportunities but also challenges. This award supports ongoing work to enhance this census, focusing on disentangling signatures of new populations and new astrophysics. More broadly, it supports the team's ongoing contributions to mission-critical tasks and publications of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. The RIT group's contributions will focus on interpreting sources both in isolation and collectively as part of the census, parameter and population inference. In one major thrust, the group will focus on enhancing and operating two existing pieces of cyberinfrastructure, parameter and population inference codes RIFT and PopModels, respectively. These improvements will enhance the capability to perform rapid and low-cost source and population parameter inference, targeting exceptional events and previously unidentified astrophysical phenomena. In parallel, the group will assess pertinent astrophysical models for several of the most tantalizing candidates for near-term discovery, emphasizing opportunities enabled by low-mass or eccentric binaries. The award will benefit from strong synergies at the RIT Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation through its core scientific objectives, where the team benefits from deep expertise from other federally supported initiatives in relativistic astrophysics. The award will support training of the STEM workforce, including underrepresented groups, as well as initiatives with REU and high-school students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.