Cosmology, Relativity, and Gravity Commons^™

The Cosmic History Of X-Ray Binary Evolution, Woodrow Gilbertson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Chandra Deep Fields provide an extraordinary window into the high-energy history of the cosmos. Observations of non-active galaxies within the deep fields can be leveraged to extract information about the formation and evolution of X-ray binaries (XRBs). Previous studies have suggested that the evolution of XRB luminosity can be expressed a function of physical parameters such as star formation rate, stellar mass, stellar age, and metallicity. The goal of this work is to develop and implement a complete physical parameterization for the luminosity of XRB populations, which can be utilized for a variety of further studies.

Chapter 1 provides …

Understanding Martian Salts And Their Implications For Liquid Water, Rachel Slank

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water is one of the key components for life as we know it. The existence of salts on Mars has been a large contributing factor to the possibility of habitability, due to their ability to allow liquid water to remain stable at colder temperatures. Salts, including perchlorates, chlorates, and chlorides, have been detected by multiple landers, rovers, and orbiters, and are now believed to be ubiquitous on Mars. One of the pathways to liquid brine solutions is through deliquescence. Deliquescence is the transition from a solid salt crystal into an aqueous solution when exposed to a humid atmosphere. This research …

Systematical Uncertainties In The Measurement Of A Gamma-Ray Burst’S Isotropic Equivalent Energy, Kimberly Zoldak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic and luminous explosions in the Universe since the Big Bang, enabling them to be observed out to extremely large redshifts (z~9). Consequently, this makes them a promising cosmological standard candle candidate. Unfortunately, however, they have proven to be quite challenging to standardize. The GRB community has worked tirelessly at this task, and to date, has put forth several luminosity-distance relations, some more propitious than others. The most prevailing problem with these relations is in their sizable amount of scatter, likely due to measurement inconsistencies and errors in the variables they employ. This arises …

Topics In Gravitational Wave Physics, Aaron David Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We begin with a brief introduction to gravitational waves. Next we look into the origin of the Chandrasekhar transformations between the different equations found by perturbing a Schwarzschild black hole. Some of the relationships turn out to be Darboux transformations. Then we turn to GW150914, the first detected black hole binary system, to see if the nonlinear memory might be detectable by current and future detectors. Finally, we develop an updated code for computing equatorial extreme mass ratio inspirals which will be open sourced as soon as it has been generalized for arbitrary inclinations.

The Disk Structure Of Late Type Galaxies: Determining The Black Hole Mass Function Of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies Through Logarithmic Spiral Arm Pitch Angle Measurement, Michael S. Fusco

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation pertains to the geometric structure of late type (spiral) galaxies, specifically on the relation between the logarithmic spiral pitch angle of the galactic spiral arms with other properties of the galaxy, such as central Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) mass. Our work continues a study of the Black Hole Mass Function (BHMF) in local galaxies by recording the pitch angles of spiral galaxies with lower surface brightness than were previously included. We also conduct a case study on the structure of an interestingly shaped galaxy, UGC 4599. Previous studies on the topic of spiral arm pitch angles have measured …

Topics In The Detection Of Gravitational Waves From Compact Binary Inspirals, Shasvath Jagat Kapadia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Orbiting compact binaries - such as binary black holes, binary neutron stars and neutron star-black hole binaries - are among the most promising sources of gravitational waves observable by ground-based interferometric detectors. Despite numerous sophisticated engineering techniques, the gravitational wave signals will be buried deep within noise generated by various instrumental and environmental processes, and need to be extracted via a signal processing technique referred to as matched filtering.

Matched filtering requires large banks of signal templates that are faithful representations of the true gravitational waveforms produced by astrophysical binaries. The accurate and efficient production of templates is thus crucial …

Logarithmic Spiral Arm Pitch Angle Of Spiral Galaxies: Measurement And Relationship To Galactic Structure And Nuclear Supermassive Black Hole Mass, Benjamin Lee Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I explore the geometric structure of spiral galaxies and how the visible structure can provide information about the central mass of a galaxy, the density of its galactic disk, and the hidden mass of the supermassive black hole in its nucleus. In order to quantitatively measure the logarithmic spiral pitch angle (a measurement of tightness of the winding) of galactic spiral arms, I led an effort in our research group (the Arkansas Galaxy Evolution Survey) to modify existing two-dimensional fast Fourier transform software to increase its efficacy and accuracy. Using this software, I was able to lead …

Exploring The Possibility Of Floating Orbits For Extreme Mass Ratio Binary Black Holes, Shasvath Jagat Kapadia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A binary black hole system, where each black hole orbits the system's center of mass, loses energy by emission of gravitational waves. This causes both black holes to spiral in towards each other. However, if the binary were to, by some mechanism, gain orbital energy at the same rate that it radiates away this energy, a non-decaying or “floating” orbit would result. The thesis uses superradiant scattering and tidal friction, which are two equivalent ways of looking at a process by which the system can gain orbital energy from the spin energy of either black hole, to determine the possibility …