Katelyn J Wagner

About Me

I am a fourth year PhD student in the Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program at Rochester Institute of Technology. Closely focused on gravitational wave astronomy, my research investigates the intricate signatures of eccentricity potentially present in signals from some binary black hole mergers. The presence of eccentricity may offer insight into the formation mechanisms of these binaries. Beyond the perhaps more conventional path of the isolated evolution of massive stars, the presence of eccentricity hints at dynamical processes at play during binary black hole formation. My work seeks to test the limits of our ability to recover the amount of eccentricity in a signal should it be present.

I am also passionate about astrophysics outreach. A substantial aspect of this commitment has involved creating accessible introductory research resources, tailored especially for high school students. I am particularly drawn to addressing historical gender disparities in the field. By extending my efforts to engage young women in particular, my aim is to cultivate a profound interest in astrophysics and to empower the next generation of accomplished women scientists.

• About Me
• CV

Research

Recent studies have shown that orbital eccentricity may indicate dynamical assembly as a formation mechanism for binary black holes. Eccentricity leaves a distinct, observationally-accessible signature in gravitational wave signals and may be measured if the binary remains eccentric when it enters the LIGO band. Though eccentricity has not yet been confidently detected, the possibility of detecting eccentric binaries is becoming more likely with the improved sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. It is crucial to assess the accuracy of current search pipelines in recovering eccentricity from gravitational wave signals. I investigate the ability of parameter estimation pipeline RIFT to recover eccentricity in the non-spinning and aligned-spin cases for low-mass binary black holes.

• Poster
• On arXiv

Master's Project

A low mass x-ray binary system is a compact object with a lower mass companion that "donates" matter to it. If the compact object is a neutron star, accretion from the lower mass object causes non-axisymmetric rotation, and gravitational wave emission may balance the spin up from the accretion. The gravitational wave signal emitted would be continuous. The particular system we examined for this search was Scorpius X-1, chosen because it is the brightest source of x-rays in our sky. The high X-ray flux implies a large accretion rate, making it a good candidate for continuous gravitational wave emission. My work involved optimizing our search method for continuous waves and running our analysis on data collected by LIGO.

• My Thesis
• On arXiv