Emily's Universe

PhD Thesis Research

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Welcome to the most important Research page in my website! This is where you can learn all about my PhD Thesis research. I am including here a short description of the research (which I will probably update often), as well as links to all the papers, presentations and posters I have made about this project. Eventually, there will be a link here to my PhD dissertation (hopefully at some point before the end of 2009).

Black Hole Mergers as Probes of Structure Formation

Observations of gravitational waves from massive black hole (MBH) mergers can provide us with important clues about the era of structure formation in the early universe. Previous research in this field has been limited to calculating merger rates of MBHs using different models where many assumptions are made about the specific values of physical parameters of the mergers, resulting in merger rate estimates that span 5 to 6 orders of magnitude. We are developing a semi-analytical, phenomenological model that includes plausible combinations of several physical parameters involved in the mergers, which we can turn around to determine how well LISA observations will be able to enhance our understanding of the universe during the critical z ~ 5 - 30 structure formation era. We do this by generating synthetic LISA observable data (total BH mass, BH mass ratio, redshift, merger rates), which is then analyzed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. This allows us to constrain the physical parameters of the mergers.

Research Descriptions

Papers

  • Coming soon! :-)

Posters

Presentations

Last Updated: 18 February 2009