Probing the Dark Universe with Gravitational Waves from Subsolar-mass Compact Objects

Download or read book Probing the Dark Universe with Gravitational Waves from Subsolar-mass Compact Objects written by Ryan Magee and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO in 2015 marked the start of a new era in astrophysics. These small ripples in space-time - first predicted in the early 20th century by Albert Einstein - encode properties of the progenitor system and provide a powerful new way to probe distant and extreme astrophysical environments. My dissertation focuses on contributions I have made in facilitating the multi-messenger detection of electromagnetically bright sources and using LIGO's observations (or lack thereof) to constrain models of the dark matter. I describe the motivation for Advanced LIGO searches for sub-solar mass ultracompact binaries, as well as two recent searches I carried out with the LIGO-Virgo Scientific Collaboration. No confident detections were made in these searches, but the null result allowed us to place the tightest contraint to date on a particular model of the dark matter. I also discuss my contributions to efforts to detect binary neutron stars. Although the first BNS detection, GW170817, was a model multi-messenger discovery, there remains much to be learned about the extreme environment of the coalescence that can only be resolved by additional, prompt observations. I describe a subthreshold search for BNS that aims to increase our catalog of joint discoveries by facilitating searches for temporal or spatial coincidence, as well as recent attempts to detect BNS prior to merger to enable prompt electromagnetic followup.