RESEARCH









Gravitational waves travel virtually unaltered through space, acting as fingerprints detailing the distorted spacetime in which they were born. Because of this remarkable quality, their structure whispers clues that are pertinent to unraveling the mysterious dynamical processes occurring in some of the most violent events in the Universe. With gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO, VIRGO, AURIGA, and GEO expected to be operational shortly after the year 2000, and a new generation of spherical wave detectors (TIGA) also under study, research in general relativity is entering into a new epoch. The theoretical modeling of the gravitational radiation expected from various objects can help to map out the astrophysical events that may be detected by ground- and space-based detectors.






Current Area of Study:



Using a 3D Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code, I am modeling the dynamical instabilities that arise in rapidly rotating, compressible, Newtonian fluids. The overall objective is to investigate the dynamics and gravitational radiation emitted by nonaxisymmetric instabilities in rapidly rotating stars.

The high rotational velocities and strong gravitational fields present in compact objects demands the introduction of relativity into the time-dependent dynamics. Since the emission of gravitational-radiation removes mass and angular momentum from the system under investigation, the effects of these gravitational radiation losses need to be incorporated into the system dynamics. Since standard Newtonian theory conserves energy and angular momentum, I have modified the SPH hydrodynamics code to remove the appropriate amount of these quantities at the same rate which they are removed due to the emission of gravitational waves. This back-reaction will affect the system dynamics and will enable the study of the relatively-unexplored effects of secular instabilities (i.e., those driven by slow dissipative effects such as viscosity and gravitational radiation) on stellar cores and coalescing neutron-star binaries.

Systems currently under study:



Rotational instabilities in rapidly rotating stellar cores.

Coalescence and merger of neutron star binaries.