PhD Student Making Gravitational Waves in Research with NASA/Mississippi Space Grant Consortium (MSSGC) Graduate Research Fellowship

by Margaret Savoie

Lorena Lorena Magaña Zertuche is a PhD student conducting research that is out of this world! More specifically, she studies gravitational wave physics. Based off her previous accomplishments, Magaña Zertuche was selected to be a NASA/Mississippi Space Grant Consortium (MSSGC) Graduate Research Fellow.

The MSSGC is a statewide non-profit organization for universities and colleges coordinated and supported by NASA. The MSSGC’s mission “is to enhance and support aerospace science and technology efforts and activities in Mississippi as well as promote a strong science, mathematics, and technology base at precollege, undergraduate, and graduate levels in the region’s educational institutions.” Seventeen Mississippi Space Grant colleges and universities comprise the MSSGC. The MSSGC is part of a larger NASA Space Grant program present in all 50 states.

Magaña Zertuche’s research is focused on the merging of two black holes and modeling the aftermath of the merger. These black holes are part of a binary system where they begin to spiral towards each other. “Once the black holes get really close together, they – essentially, they are about to merge…you have to solve for Einstein’s equation due to the very strong gravity right after the black holes collide,” said Magaña Zertuche. After the merging of two black holes, there is essentially one giant black hole. This then rings out like a bell to dissipate all the energy from the merger process. Magaña Zertuche seeks to model the wave forms of that energy. This model can be used to figure out the spin and the mass of the merger’s final black hole.

Her path began with working on a bachelor of physics degree with an astrophysics concentration at Georgia Tech. That led her to Syracuse University and a master’s in physics, which then led Magaña Zertuche to move to the University of Mississippi in 2017 where she began work on her PhD in the physics department.

“I was very interested in astronomy from a very early age, I must have been around 12, when young kids have this obsession with space. It started out very general, but when I got to high school, I realized I wanted to know ‘why’,” said Magaña Zertuche. It was not until she was an undergraduate student, talking to an upper-class friend about her research with neutron stars and black holes, when Magaña Zertuche took a step forward into the subject by asking a professor for an opportunity to work with her.

Magaña Zertuche said she was “very, very excited,” when she found out about receiving the MSSGC Fellowship, “I didn’t expect it because I know having these fellowships are pretty competitive. I knew the chances were not zero, but they were not extremely high. I feel extremely fortunate.”

While working on her research here at the University of Mississippi, Magaña Zertuche’s works with Professor Leo Stein in the physics department. When asked about Magaña Zertuche’s fellowship, Stein said, “It’s very fortunate to get support from funding agencies to do this and that the funding agencies think that what we’re doing is worth doing.”

Magaña Zertuche hopes for a future in academia. As a teaching assistant with Dr. Maurice Eftink (a former dean of our Graduate School), Magaña Zertuche was able to see what it was like to have her own class. Eftink permitted her to take charge of the physics components within the LIBA 150/151 courses. Magaña Zertuche said, “It was really a lot of fun because it allowed me to experience what it would be like to have my own class but in a scale that I could manage.”

“Before [the fellowship] Lorena would have to spend lots of time grading and teaching, which is all important because we are training the next generation of scientists and engineers,” Stein continued, “but this means that now she can spend 100 percent of her time doing her research.”

The interview with Magaña Zertuche was over Zoom while she was participating in a three-month long program at UCLA. While at UCLA, Magaña Zertuche continued her research and participated in tutorials and workshops with scholars from across the United States and across the globe as well. Magaña Zertuche learned about machine learning, an aspect of her proposed project, along with more mathematical aspects of detecting the signals of the merging of black holes.

“Machine learning is becoming a very big area in gravitational wave physics for detecting signals,” said Magaña Zertuche. Magaña Zertuche is going to implement machine learning in her project, and this helped her receive the NASA/MSSGC Fellowship. Her proposal is to build a high precision surrogate ringdown model of two black holes merging. This will be the first model to simultaneously fit for multiple mode frequencies over all angles and all times. This will be beneficial to a future mission called LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna). LISA is a gravitational wave observatory to be based in space. “Essentially, the same observatories we have here on earth but in space, which will help avoid a bunch [of] noise that you have here on Earth which disrupts the signals. You will be able to see much farther out in space.”

The MSSGC Fellowship also has an outreach component. This is important for Magaña Zertuche because it allows her to give back to the community. With her outreach, Magaña Zertuche hopes to spark curiosity in people who may be underrepresented in space research. For example, the American Institute of Physics noted that in 2019 only 19% of the US’s Ph.D.’s in physics were awarded to women. Magaña Zertuche is hopeful for younger generations, “Maybe I could be a sort of role model but it’s important that they see someone more like them doing science.”

PhD Student Making Gravitational Waves in Research with NASA/Mississippi Space Grant Consortium (MSSGC) Graduate Research Fellowship

Newsletter Fall/Winter 2021 Articles