Black Hole Perturbations and Gravitational Self Force Physics

This award supports research that will have a broad impact upon our understanding of the applications of General Relativity to extreme astrophysical systems, upon science education, and upon understanding and appreciation of science by the public. The detection of gravitational waves, either on Earth or in space, is opening a new window on the universe. Such detections will allow new tests of our current theory of gravity when applied to the most extreme systems imaginable. Likely sources of these waves include binary systems of black holes and neutron stars and solar mass objects orbiting and eventually spiraling into very large black holes - one thousand to ten billion times the mass of the Sun. These sources include some of the most surprising objects in the universe. New analysis is being developed to more efficiently describe the spacetime dynamics of systems of compact objects, such as rotating black hole binaries, which evolve through the emission of gravitational waves. The experimental effort leading toward the detection of gravitational waves and, ultimately, the analysis of the source characteristics will directly benefit from accurate theoretical prediction of the orbital trajectories.

To pursue this work, the exploration of gravitational self force effects will continue. A new comparison between numerical and analytical (post-Newtonian) results will be made once second order numerical data becomes available from the self force community. This work is carried out in collaboration with colleagues at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and with a postdoc at UF. Confidence in the regularization required for both self force and post-Newtonian calculations will be increased, as will understanding of the post-Newtonian expansion itself. New gauge invariant quantities, with second and higher order derivatives acting on the metric, will be systematically investigated for perturbations of the Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes, and equations which they satisfy will be sought. This latter effort will be carried out in collaboration with a colleague in Southampton University, and with several mathematical colleagues with ties to the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany. The similarities and differences between problems in the Schwarzschild and Kerr geometries will be carefully analyzed with a view to making self force calculations in the Kerr spacetime background more efficient.