Gravitational Waves

Gravitational radiation -- extremely weak ripples of space-time that propagate at the speed of light -- carry full information about the dynamics of strong-field gravity; the universe is pervaded by this form of radiation, whose most copious emitters are concentrations of highly relativistic masses: white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes and the early universe itself. Gravitational waves (predicted by Einstein in 1918) have been indirectly detected through the monitoring of the orbital decay of radio pulsars in binary systems : Hulse and Taylor were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993 for pioneering work in this area. The direct detection of gravitational radiation lies still into the future, that is however approaching fast.

A PhD project is available to fully develop at the conceptual level a new Bayesian analysis approach to search for (i) gravitational waves from coalescing binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars and/or black holes) and/or (ii) stochastic gravitational waves from the early universe or abundant populations of astrophysical sources. This initial study will lead to the implementation of algorithms into the LSC analysis pipelines running on large-scale Beowulf clusters to carry out searches for gravitational waves in the actual data. The successful candidate(s) are also expected to explore these techniques for the science exploitation of the LISA mission.