This $294,769 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Physics, under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), supports research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to enhance the discovery potential of gravitational wave observations from merging black holes.
The key objectives of this 3-year award are to develop robust techniques for extracting measurements of black hole spin-precession and orbital eccentricity from gravitational wave data, even in the presence of instrumental artifacts known as "glitches". This research aims to leverage the expected increase in gravitational wave detections during the upcoming LIGO/Virgo observing campaign to obtain more precise astrophysical information about the formation and evolution of black hole binary systems. The findings are intended to advance the nascent field of gravitational wave astrophysics and address priority areas under NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea initiative.