Gravitational waves as an avenue for exploring fundamental physics

Observations of gravitational waves emitted by compact binaries provide an exciting new avenue for exploring unanswered questions in fundamental physics. In this thesis, we present three projects that each contribute to this goal in different ways. We study the mathematical structure of isolated black holes in the quadratic gravity theories dynamical Chern-Simons and scalar Gauss-Bonnett. Using the Killing equation and Newman-Penrose formalism, we analytically investigate the symmetries and categorize the properties of these modified black holes. Next, we turn towards waveform systematics because extracting information from gravitation wave signals requires sufficiently accurate waveform models. Through an injection and recovery campaign of binary black hole signals, we show that uncertainties in calibrated coefficients in phenomenological waveform models can substantially bias astrophysical parameters recovered during data analysis. We propose a method to mitigate these biases by including the coefficients as model parameters and marginalizing over them during parameter estimation. We show that this procedure significantly reduced biases at the cost of increasing statistical error. Finally, we consider a compact binary enhanced with a dark Proca interaction and construct an inspiral waveform accurate to the first post-Newtonian order. We use this waveform in a Bayesian analysis of binary signals observed by the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Collaboration and find that we are able to place constraints on the dark-sector effects.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Owen, Caroline B.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Yunes, Nicolás
• Witek , Helvi
• Kahn , Yonatan F
• Noronha-Hostler, Jacquelyn
• Noronha, Jr. , Jorge Leite

• Gravitational Waves
• Fundamental Physics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Caroline Owen

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127236

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F127236