Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

With the stunning observations of gravitational waves from merging black holes and neutron stars we have entered a new age of astronomy and precision gravity. There is every indication that as the number and sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors increase in the coming years, there will be a flood of observations, revealing new aspects of the universe visible only in gravitational waves. Maximizing the return of these observations, and utilizing them as a new probe of fundamental physics will require advances in our theoretical understanding of gravity in this regime. My long term goal is to ensure the highest scientific pay off at both practical and fundamental levels with respect to our understanding of gravity and its far reaching consequences for astropphysics and fundamental understanding. This requires a holistic approach to extract the most physics from signals produced by key systems through a deep connection with ever more faithful models that are challenged and advanced by such observations.  A central part of this proposal is to study in depth possible departures from the standard paradigm, i.e. gravity described by General Relativity and standard compact objects (black holes or neutron stars) and pave the way for demanding tests which can uncover deviations from such paradigm. This will yield fundamental breakthroughs to advance our knowledge of the physical laws that govern our universe. To this end, an intimate knowledge must be gained in the extreme regimes where gravity not only can produce the most energetic ripples in the fabric of spacetime but also triggering intense electromagnetic signals. To this end, a thorough understanding of gravitational fields in the most dynamic and strongly gravitating regimes should be gained. As part of achieving this long term goal, my team and I will 1) advance and ambitius program to consistently explore deviations from the standards and develop refined analysis techniques to potentially unearth them from the data obtained through current and future detectors.  2) We will explore novel ideas for possible electromagnetic counterparts to non-merging binary systems and examine its relevance for Fast Radio Burst models. 3) We will develop further the duality between black holes and Carrollian hydrodynamics and explore the possible analog of enstrophy and its role in constraining energy cascade to smaller scales. This work should help explain the simplicity of gravitational waves produced by binary black hole mergersand further cement connections between black holes and field theories. This research will provide students with the chance to participate in a rapidly growing field, fluency in astrophysics, fundamental gravity, and computational physics. They will develop skills in advanced mathematics, software development, data analysis and high- performance computing that are increasingly in demand both in academia and areas of technology like data science as weall as leadership.