The Physics department colloquia are usually on Friday afternoons at 3 pm in Room 135. Coffee and cookies are served at 2:45 pm in the same room. Anyone is welcome.

Modeling Binary Black Hole Systems with Black Hole Perturbation Theory
Tomas M. Linz, PhD Candidate, UWM Dept. of Physics

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, systems of two or more bodies should emit an oscillating gravitational signal that we call a gravitational wave. The detection and characterization of these waves would provide an enormous scientific benefit to the fields of astronomy, cosmology, and fundamental physics. Unfortunately, these signals are very weak, so that in addition to needing extremely sensitive equipment, we also need to have very accurate models of the waves created by the possible sources. A physically compelling system for study is a system of two black holes with an extreme mass ratio; in this case it is natural to treat the smaller black hole as a point particle whose field perturbs that of the larger black hole. The goal of my research is to create an accurate model of the point particle’s orbit by accounting for the force it feels from interacting with its own field, which we call the gravitational self-force. The calculation of the self-force is complicated by the fact that the point particle’s own field diverges at the location of the particle, precisely where we need to evaluate it.

In this talk, I will discuss how we overcame the inherent challenges in computing the self-force. I will also discuss how, with the aid of some recent results, it will be possible to significantly reduce the computational time required to compute the gravitational self-force, possibly to the point where we could generate self-force corrected trajectories and compute the resulting gravitational wave signals.