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    		•

    LISA Discussion Group

    Place: OSMOND 318
    Time: Mondays, 10:30am - 12:30pm

    Welcome to a new semester of LISA Reading Group! Our previous encounters can be found here:

    [ Fall 2004 | Spring 2005 ]

    The goal of this weekly meeting is to survey, discuss and debate the LISA literature, particularly the "famous" works which are typically cited regarding LISA's capabilities, important computational and data analysis challenges for LISA, and essential astrophysics related to LISA sources.

    FORMAT: Each week we'll choose 1 or 2 papers to review and discuss. Meeting format for discussion of the papers will be roundtable, *without* prepared presentations. Since everyone will have read the paper(s), we'll work our way through the paper section by section. Each person will take a section and kick start the discussion.

    The goal in discussion is summarize the main points of the papers, unveil and flay to death confusing issues and points, and make connections to other interesting tidbits of unique and relevant knowledge that each of us has at our respective fingertips.

    PAPERS: The topical areas will vary from week to week, hopefully alternating among astrophysics, data analysis, and detector papers. Papers will be chosen on a rolling basis using a very sophisticated screening process where Louis, Kelly and I huddle together and say "What do you think about this paper?" Suggestions for topics of explicit interest to participants in this reading group will be gratefully accepted.

    A chronology of our readings can be found below, with links to electronic documents. For an extensive list of LISA literature, visit our local LISA literature survey. For jumping off points to all things LISA, visit our local LISA Resources Page.

    Supplements

    Collection of additional materials used during, alluded to, or produced as a consequence of our discussions in the LISA Reading Group.

    1. 6 May 2005 BCV paper about phenomenological fitting.
      A. Buonanno, Y. Chen and M. Vallisneri Detection template families from the final stages of binary black hole inspirals: non-spinning case, PRD 67, 024016 (2003) [PDF]

    1. 8 Apr 2005 (sll) Recent paper on EMRI and rate estimates.
      C. Hopman and T. Alexander The Orbital Statistics of stellar inspiral and relaxation near a massive black hole: characterizing gravitational wave sources astro-ph/0503672 [PDF]

    1. 23 Feb 2005 (lsf) Supplemental papers from Sam about model comparison; useful for those thinking about curve fitting, and for beginning to think about MaxEnt.
      D. MacKay, preprint of Neural Computation review paper (1991) [PDF]

    1. 08 Feb 2005 (khb) Supplemental papers from Kelly about different methods of building galaxies.
      T. Statler, ApJ 425,458[ (1994) [PDF]
      Thomas et al., MNRAS 353, 391 (2004) [PDF]

    1. 18 Jan 2005 (sll) Recent black hole press releases.
      These are two recent press releases with interesting black hole results. The first describes an eruption event ascribed to long term inflow of massive quantities of material into a supermassive black hole. The second is about two observations about stellar mass black holes in the Milky Way and about material observed orbiting distant supermassive black holes; these were discussed at the AAS.
      [ Eruption Event | BHs at AAS ]

    Reading Schedule

    Monday, 9 May 2005

    1. P. Nutzman, V. Kalogera, LS Finn, C. Hendrickson and K. Belczynski, "Gravitational waves from extragalactic inspiraling binaries: selection effects and expected detection rates", ApJ, 612, 364 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    Return to this paper as an example of approach and galaxy distributions we can use for our own devious purposes, complete with commentary from TWO of the authors (Sam and Vicky).

    Monday, 25 April 2005

    1. K. Ioka and P. Meszaros, "Spatial Correlation of Massive Black Hole Mergers: Probing the Formation Mechanism and the Reionization".
      astro-ph/0502437
      [PDF ]

    A look at cosmology and astrophysics which could be extracted from G-wave observations of massive black hole mergers.

    Monday, 18 April 2005

    1. L. S. Finn, "Notes on MaxEnt".
      [PDF ]

    MaxEnt, possibly for the last (?) time; I think we've almost grokked this.

    Monday, 11 April 2005

    1. S. Detweiler, "Perspectives on gravitational self force analysis", SECTION 10.3 ff only.
      [PDF ]

    2. E. Flanagan, "Implementing Mino's prescription...".
      [PDF ]

    This week Steve Detweiler will be joining us, so we use the opportunity to return to the discussion of radiation reaction. For reference notes while we pick Steve's brain, we'll use a write up he provided, and a recent talk by Eanna Flanagan.

    Monday, 28 March 2005

    1. L. S. Finn, "Notes on MaxEnt".
      [PDF ]

    We return once again to the MaxEnt notes, starting at Section III.

    Monday, 21 March 2005

    1. K. J. Rhook and J. S. B. Wyithe, "Realistic event rates for detection of supermassive black hole coalescence", astroph/0503210 (accepted in MNRAS).
      [PDF ]

    We've yet to complete the MaxEnt notes, but are taking a breather this week to talk about astrophysics. This paper considers the LISA event rate for SMBH binary mergers.

    Monday, 14 March 2005

    1. L. S. Finn, "Notes on MaxEnt".
      [PDF ]

    After an extended discussion of Bayesian analysis, we didn't quite make it to MaxEnt last week. We'll continue this week on the MaxEnt notes, starting at Section III.

    Monday, 7 March 2005

    1. L. S. Finn, "Notes on MaxEnt".
      [PDF ]

    We're beginning our expedition into data analysis with some notes Sam has prepared on Maximum Entropy. Sam believes we will be well prepared for this voyage if we can grok this (if you don't grok "grokking", click here).

    Monday, 28 February 2005

    1. P. Nutzman, V. Kalogera, LS Finn, C. Hendrickson and K. Belczynski, "Gravitational waves from extragalactic inspiraling binaries: selection effects and expected detection rates", ApJ, 612, 364 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    Second attempt! We got sidetracked last week! :-)

    Monday, 21 February 2005

    1. P. Nutzman, V. Kalogera, LS Finn, C. Hendrickson and K. Belczynski, "Gravitational waves from extragalactic inspiraling binaries: selection effects and expected detection rates", ApJ, 612, 364 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    A recent paper about how to interpret G-wave observations and use them to make meaningful statements about what we can learn about the Universe from a set of observations. The paper is LIGO-centric, but the goal is to help change the way we think about detection and interpretation.

    Monday, 14 February 2005

    No reading. This week we will discuss status of current projects being pursued by the group, in particular the Astrophysical Constraints of EMRIs, and the Phenomenological Waveform Fitting.

    Monday, 7 February 2005

    1. T. Statler, E. Emsellem, R. Peletier and R. Bacon, "Long-lived triaxiality in the dynamically old elliptical galaxy NGC 4365: a limit on chaos and black hole mass", MNRAS, 353, 1 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    2. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, J. Mihos, S. Sigurdsson, L. Hernquist and C. Norman, "The Evolution of Cuspy Triaxial Galaxies Harboring Central Black Holes", ApJ, 567, 817 (2002).
      [PDF ]

    3. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, "Black Holes and Triaxial Galaxy Metamorphosis", (talk slides)
       [PDF ]

    4. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, "Bringing Black Holes Together", (talk slides)
       [PDF ]

    After trying to all get up to speed on what these triaxial galaxies are all about last week, we've agreed to give the papers another shot. We've also added the slides from a talk that should be helpful, have pretty pictures and so forth.

    Monday, 31 January 2005

    1. T. Statler, E. Emsellem, R. Peletier and R. Bacon, "Long-lived triaxiality in the dynamically old elliptical galaxy NGC 4365: a limit on chaos and black hole mass", MNRAS, 353, 1 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    2. Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, J. Mihos, S. Sigurdsson, L. Hernquist and C. Norman, "The Evolution of Cuspy Triaxial Galaxies Harboring Central Black Holes", ApJ, 567, 817 (2002).
      [PDF ]

    Per request, some papers about triaxiality in galaxies. The first is an observation and some constraints, with reference to the models laid out in the second paper. Kelly suggests if you find yourself slogging through the details of models and modeling techniques, to focus attention on the introductory material and concluding material, which should give better insight to the current status, problems and interesting issues in the field. She has promised to field questions and provide exposition on the current status of the field and how it has evolved from a state of "wrongness" only 20 years ago.

    Monday, 24 January 2005

    1. Eric Poisson, "The gravitational self-force", gr-qc/0410127, plenary talk at GR17 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    We didn't quite get to all of this paper last week, and others seem pretty dense on the subject. Focus on Sections I, II, V, VII and VIII. Questions to keep in mind: (1) In some broad sense, what is the current status of radiation reaction calculations are and why they are hard to do? (2) Is it important to solve/understand radiation reaction in order to do other G-wave science? As an example, if we start constructing calculations for EMRI sources, how "wrong" will the calculations be because radiation reaction has not been properly included? What about equal mass binaries?

    Monday, 17 January 2005

    1. Eric Poisson, "The gravitational self-force", gr-qc/0410127, plenary talk at GR17 (2004).
      [PDF ]

    As we spend time probing questions related to EMRIs in the LISA band, interest has been expressed in current status of the "self-froce" problem in gravitational inspiral. This paper reviews the current status of the field.
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    Last Updated: 15 April 2005