Gravitational waves as an avenue for exploring fundamental physics

Owen, Caroline B.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127236 Copy

Description

Title

Gravitational waves as an avenue for exploring fundamental physics

Author(s)

Owen, Caroline B.

Issue Date

2024-12-04

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Yunes , Nicolás

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Witek , Helvi

Committee Member(s)

• Kahn , Yonatan F
• Noronha-Hostler, Jacquelyn
• Noronha, Jr. , Jorge Leite

Department of Study

Physics

Discipline

Physics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Gravitational waves
• fundamental physics

Abstract

Observations of gravitational waves emitted by compact binaries provide an exciting new avenue for exploring unanswered questions in fundamental physics. In this thesis, we present three projects that each contribute to this goal in different ways. We study the mathematical structure of isolated black holes in the quadratic gravity theories dynamical Chern-Simons and scalar Gauss-Bonnett. Using the Killing equation and Newman-Penrose formalism, we analytically investigate the symmetries and categorize the properties of these modified black holes. Next, we turn towards waveform systematics because extracting information from gravitation wave signals requires sufficiently accurate waveform models. Through an injection and recovery campaign of binary black hole signals, we show that uncertainties in calibrated coefficients in phenomenological waveform models can substantially bias astrophysical parameters recovered during data analysis. We propose a method to mitigate these biases by including the coefficients as model parameters and marginalizing over them during parameter estimation. We show that this procedure significantly reduced biases at the cost of increasing statistical error. Finally, we consider a compact binary enhanced with a dark Proca interaction and construct an inspiral waveform accurate to the first post-Newtonian order. We use this waveform in a Bayesian analysis of binary signals observed by the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Collaboration and find that we are able to place constraints on the dark-sector effects.

Graduation Semester

2024-12

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127236

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2024 Caroline Owen

Owning Collections