Salvatore Vitale
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA·Astronomy & Astrophysics·Early-career
When two black holes or neutron stars spiral together and merge, they send out gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime that detectors such as LIGO and Virgo can record. Each signal carries information about its source, such as the objects' masses and spins.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
gravitational waves
gravitational-wave astronomy
Virgo
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Develop statistical tools to characterize the population of merging black hole and neutron star binaries while accounting for marginal detections and for candidate signals that may not be astrophysical.
- Quantify and reduce systematic errors from gravitational-wave detector calibration, which converts raw output into a strain signal, so that inferred source properties such as masses and spins stay reliable.
- Build a series of increasingly difficult simulated data challenges for next-generation detectors such as Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope. The challenges include overlapping signals, non-stationary noise and data gaps.
- Use the data challenges to identify which new detection and inference algorithms are needed and to estimate the computing resources required to fully analyze next-generation detector data.
More about the research
Detections are becoming frequent, so the challenge is shifting. Instead of analyzing single events, researchers must combine many events while keeping errors under control. These grants address that challenge for today's detectors and for the much more sensitive observatories planned for the 2030s.
Why it matters
This is fundamental astrophysics. Reliable population analyses and calibration-error control help ensure that what LIGO and its partner detectors report about black holes and neutron stars is trustworthy. The data challenges could show whether planned observatories such as Cosmic Explorer can deliver on questions about dense matter. They could also tell planners how much computing these observatories will require.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Wolfgang Tichy
Florida Atlantic University, FL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Simulate binary neutron star mergers containing dark matter across a range of dark matter fractions, particle masses, mass ratios and spins with the BAM code, to set limits on dark matter in neutron stars.
Hsin-Yu Chen
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Quantify systematic uncertainties that electromagnetic counterpart emission from merging neutron stars introduces into standard siren measurements of the Hubble constant.
Antonios Tsokaros
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Develop an open-source general relativistic initial data code, based on the COCAL (Compact Object CALculator) code, that lets users set up starting conditions for magnetized neutron stars and black holes, alone or in binaries.
The school
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 25 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 692 research doctorates a year.
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