Project Grant 2409644

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $360,000 Project Grant under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a 3-year research project titled "Building Precise Gravitational Wave Models with Black Hole Perturbation Theory". The project aims to improve understanding of how black holes in binary systems interact and how their interactions affect the gravitational waves they produce. The core work will use black hole perturbation theory to study the endpoint of binary black hole coalescence and investigate gravitational waves produced by spinning bodies orbiting black holes. The project will also develop surrogate binary black hole models and open-source tools for producing fast waveforms in the small mass-ratio limit. No sub-awards are planned for this project.