Deirdre M Shoemaker

Gravity at its Strongest

Over 100 years ago, Einstein (with help) formulated how gravity acts in the Universe from apple's dropping from trees to black holes colliding. Two of the most interesting predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity were gravitational wave emission and black holes. Just a few years ago, we saw the first direct measurement of these two phenomena when the NSF LIGO detected the first gravitational waves emitted from the first seen black hole binary. Now we are witnessing the bounty of the LIGO Virgo Kagra collaboration detecting multitudes of black hole and neutron star binaries. Members of my team are part of this collaboration and work toward predicting and interpreting these gravitational wave detections. And this is just the beginning, we are also working toward future gravitational wave detectors on the ground and in space (ESA/NASA LISA) to fully explore what the Universe can teach us about gravity.

Binary Black Holes

These are my favorite compact objects, the represent the ultimate compactification as far as we understand physics today. They are in some sense very simple, just regions of extremely curved space; granted they have a point of infinite curvature we call a singularty at their center. The fact that stars can become black holes at the end of their shinny life, form a bianry and then collide producing gravitational waves we detect here on Earth is WILD!

Numerical Relativity

My group (and others worldwide) use the powerful tool we can numerical relativity to solve Einstein's equations. Einstein's equations for gravity are a complicated set of coupled, non-linear partial differential equations that form a Cauchy problem. We use computational techniques to discover the spacetime dynamics and resulting gravitational wave emission of colliding balck holes. Numerical relativity is at its best when the gravity is at its strongest, cue neutron stars and black holes.

Gravitational Waves

My team works mostly at the interface of numerical relativity and gravitational wave data analysis. We use numerical relativity to predict the gravitational waves produced when black holes (and sometimes neutron stars) collide. And then we work with the detection collaborations to use these predictions to interpret gravitational waves and search for the smoking gun evidence of devitions from Einstein's gravity.