Embedding Gravitational Waves in the Cosmos

The fields of gravitational waves and cosmology are going through an exciting period of growth. In the
coming years, we will see incredibly rich data sets coming from late-time cosmology experiments such
as DES, DESI, LSST and Euclid as well as new gravitational wave discoveries from LIGO that will
pave the way for the future space-based experiment LISA. This project aims to benefit from the ICG's
position as a world-leading institute in both cosmology and gravitational waves by bridging the gap
between these two fields at the frontier of our understanding of the universe. This will be done by
studying gravitational-wave sources in a cosmic context. The student will use the "SkyPy" toolkit to
explore the connection between gravitational-wave events and the properties of their host galaxies
and dark matter haloes. They will then investigate how observations of gravitational-wave events can
be used to make inferences about these properties. This will allow the student to gain a deeper
understanding of how experiments such as LIGO and LSST can best work together and to develop
novel and innovative methods for analysing gravitational wave systems.
Looking to the long term, we will aim to explore how the future LISA space-based gravitational-wave
astronomy can be used to test cosmology through observations of supermassive (10^5 times the
mass of the Sun and larger) and even intermediate mass (10^3 - 10^5 times the mass of our Sun)
binary black hole collisions at cosmological distances.