Testing General Relativity with Binary Black Hole Mergers

Document #:

LIGO-T1700224-v1

Document type:

T - Technical notes

Abstract:

The several recent detections of gravitational waves (GWs) by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has provided researchers with the first opportunities to test general relativity (GR) in the strong-field and highly-dynamical limit. Qualitative tests of the agreement between LIGO's GW observations and classical GR have already been done; we aim to carry out more quantitative tests in terms of controlled, parameterized deviations from GR. In this project, we simulate a number of BBH merger waveforms with similar deviations from GR. We then use Bayesian analysis to recover the deviation and provide an estimate of the number of GW detections from BBH mergers necessary to establish a given deviation from classical GR.

Files in Document:

• Mastandrea_SURF_final_report_v5.pdf (1.0 MB)

Other Files:

• 6-23-graphs.docx (1.2 MB)
• 6-23-sim.py (4.0 kB)
• 6-26-graphs.docx (1.7 MB)
• 6-26-sim.py (20.8 kB)
• 6-27-bayes.py (6.0 kB)
• 6-27-time.png (61.0 kB)
• 6-29-graphs.docx (600.6 kB)
• 6-30-bayes.ipynb (2.0 MB)
• 7-10.ipynb (210.9 kB)
• 7-11.ipynb (199.4 kB)
• 7-21-old-asd.ipynb (343.7 kB)
• 7-24.ipynb (600.6 kB)
• 7-5-graphs.docx (1.5 MB)
• 7-7-SNR-waveform-manip.ipynb (29.4 kB)
• Mastandrea_Radha_LIGO_project_proposal_1_5_2017.pdf (333.0 kB)
• Mastandrea_SURF17_presentation.pdf (2.7 MB)
• Mastandrea_surf17_progress_report_2_FINAL.pdf (447.2 kB)
• emcee_tutorial.py (1.8 kB)
• plotting_mcmc_ip.ipynb (7.1 kB)
• 10000 simulated BBH events (10000_BBH_events_updated.txt, 2.7 MB)
• 6-22 assignment code (bhm_events_sim.py, 675 bytes)
• 6-22 assignment picture (random_bhm_sim.png, 215.0 kB)
• A number of functions used to calculate SNR (BBH_analysis_functions.py, 6.7 kB)
• Base code used to run lambda analyses; uses LIGO software to compute FFT's (guessing_lambda.py, 10.0 kB)
• Code for 6-23 images (6-22-sim.py, 8.4 kB)
• Function to generate fft and psd from raw strain data (get_ligo_data_psd.py, 1.4 kB)
• Mastandrea_surf17_progress_report_1.pdf (ProgressReport1 (1).pdf, 1.5 MB)
• Not my code but used by LIGO to read hdf5 files (readligo.py, 16.8 kB)
• Old code; used to practice filtering raw strain data (ligo_gr_tests.py, 6.7 kB)
• Runs all analyses of LIGO's 4 events (analyzing_ligo.py, 13.3 kB)

Topics:

• Astrophysics / Multi-messenger
• Data Analysis
• Compact Binaries

Authors:

• Radha Mastandrea
• Alan Weinstein

Keywords:

SURF17

Referenced by:

• LIGO-T1800048: Final reports from LIGO SURF program, Summer 2017