Related papers: Probing Extremal Gravitational-Wave Events with Co…
The sensitivity of gravitational wave searches for binary black holes is estimated via the injection and posterior recovery of simulated gravitational wave signals in the detector data streams. When a search reports no detections, the…
The LIGO/Virgo detections of binary black hole mergers marked a watershed moment in astronomy, ushering in the era of precision tests of Kerr dynamics. We review theoretical and experimental challenges that must be overcome to carry out…
Compact binary coalescences are a promising source of gravitational waves for second-generation interferometric gravitational-wave detectors such as advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo. While most binaries are expected to possess circular…
While recent gravitational wave observations by LIGO and Virgo allow for tests of general relativity in the extreme gravity regime, these observations are still blind to a large swath of phenomena outside these instruments' sensitivity…
We present a new statistical test that examines the consistency of the tails of two empirical distributions at multiple thresholds. Such distributions are often encountered in counting experiments, in physics and elsewhere, where the…
In this thesis we consider the data analysis problem of detecting gravitational waves emitted by inspiraling binary systems. Detection of gravitational waves will open a new window on the Universe enabling direct detection of systems such…
Ultralight bosons, which are predicted in a variety of beyond-Standard-Model scenarios as dark-matter candidates, can trigger the superradiant instability around spinning black holes. This instability gives rise to oscillating boson…
The direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO has confirmed general relativity (GR) and sparked rapid growth in gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. However, subtle post-Newtonian (PN) deviations observed during the analysis of high…
The fundamental process of detecting and examining the polarization modes of gravitational waves plays a pivotal role in enhancing our grasp on the precise mechanisms behind their generation. A thorough investigation is essential for…
By now, tens of gravitational-wave (GW) events have been detected by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. These GWs have all been emitted by compact binary coalescence, for which we have excellent predictive models. However, there might be other…
Recently, strong evidence was found for the presence of higher-order modes in the gravitational wave signals GW190412 and GW190814, which originated from compact binary coalescences with significantly asymmetric component masses. This has…
The recent LIGO observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger triggered several follow-up searches from both electromagnetic wave as well as neutrino observatories. Since in general, it is expected that all matter has…
The explosive coalescence of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away has for the very first time allowed us to peer into the extreme gravity region of spacetime surrounding these events. With these maximally compact objects reaching…
When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes may retain eccentric orbits ($e>0.1$ at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate…
The second Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog reported on 39 compact binary coalescences observed by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors between 1 April 2019 15:00 UTC and 1 October 2019 15:00 UTC. We present GWTC-2.1, which…
LIGO and Virgo have recently observed a number of gravitational wave (GW) signals that are fully consistent with being emitted by binary black holes described by general relativity. However, there are theoretical proposals of exotic objects…
Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes allow new tests of general relativity to be performed on strong, dynamical gravitational fields. These tests require accurate waveform models of the gravitational-wave signal, otherwise…
Using the cross-correlation data from the first three observing runs of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, we search for a gravitational-wave background (GWB) from primordial black holes, arising from the superposition of compact binary…
A consequence of adopting a modified gravitational theory (MOG) for the aLIGO GW190521 gravitational wave detection involving binary black hole sources is to fit the aLIGO strain and chirp data with lower mass, compact coalescing binary…
The detection of an intermediate-mass black hole population ($10^2-10^6$ $M_{\odot}$) will provide clues to their formation environments (e.g., disks of active galactic nuclei, globular clusters) and illuminate a potential pathway to…