Visualizing curved spacetime around colliding black holes
Advisor: David Nichols
How to contact me: Email
Email: dn2ep@virginia.edu
Location: PHYS 327B
What I do: I am interested in understanding the most strongly gravitating and luminous astrophysical events in the Universe. Specifically, I focus on measuring and understanding the gravitational waves emitted by binaries composed of black holes and/or neutron stars.
What you will do: The student will work on making visualizations of the curved spacetime from binaries emitting gravitational waves. The student will use the technique briefly summarized on the following webpage (https://dnichols1.github.io/visualizations/). However, the student will work on generalizing the technique to systems without an axis of symmetry for which the curvature of spacetime must be plotted in all three spatial dimensions.
Tags: Gravitation and Astrophysics Theory
Project Scope: Single Semester Dedicated (Think PHYS 3995), Multiple Semesters (1+ year)
Qualified Students
Additional Information