Lee Samuel Finn

Lee Samuel Finn was born in 1959 in Burbank, Calif, USA. He went to school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned the B.S. degree in physics and mathematics. He studied theoretical gravitational physics and astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, earning the M.S. degree in 1983 and the Ph.D. degree in 1987 with a thesis on relativistic stellar pulsations. In 1987, he joined the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Cornell University as a Research Associate, where he refocused his research onto gravitational wave sources. In 1991 he joined the faculty of Northwestern University, where —in anticipation of the construction of the LIGO and Virgo detectors— his research interests broadened to encompass gravitational wave data analysis and interpretation of observations. He was tenured in 1996 to spend 1997-1998 with the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech. In 1998, he joined the faculty of The Pennsylvania State University Physics and Astronomy and Astrophysics Departments. In 2000-2001, he led the creation of the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, which he directs. He was promoted to a Full Professor in 2002 and elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2003. He has been associated with the LIGO as a Member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since its inception, and before that as the first Chair of the LIGO Research Community and the LIGO Laboratory Program Advisory Committee. He coled the first analyses of LIGO data for burst sources of gravitational radiation and remains the lead of one of the largest LIGO Scientific Collaboration groups. He is currently a Member of the LISA International Science Team, helping to frame the science requirements for this ambitious space-based gravitational wave detector. His current research interests focus on gravitational waves as a tool of astronomical discovery and as a probe of the fundamental physics of gravity in the regime of strong and dynamical fields.

Biography Updated on 23 August 2007

Personal Home Page

http://gravity.psu.edu/people/LSF

Articles in Scholarly Journals [Incomplete List]

  1. A first comparison of SLOPE and other LIGO burst event trigger generators
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 23, no. 19, pp. S733–S740, 2006
  2. GravEn: software for the simulation of gravitational wave detector network response
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 23, no. 19, pp. S799–S807, 2006
  3. Search for gravitational waves associated with the gamma ray burst GRB030329 using the LIGO detectors
    Physical Review D, vol. 72, no. 4, 2005
  4. Upper limits on gravitational wave bursts in LIGO’s second science run
    Physical Review D, vol. 72, no. 6, 2005
  5. Improving the efficiency of the detection of gravitational wave signals from inspiraling compact binaries: Chebyshev interpolation
    Physical Review D, vol. 72, no. 10, 2005
  6. Limits on Gravitational-Wave Emission from Selected Pulsars Using LIGO Data
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 94, no. 18, 2005
  7. Setting upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134 using the first science data from the GEO 600 and LIGO detectors
    Physical Review D, vol. 69, no. 8, 2004
  8. First upper limits from LIGO on gravitational wave bursts
    Physical Review D, vol. 69, no. 10, 2004
  9. Analysis of LIGO data for gravitational waves from binary neutron stars
    Physical Review D, vol. 69, no. 12, 2004
  10. Analysis of first LIGO science data for stochastic gravitational waves
    Physical Review D, vol. 69, no. 12, 2004
  11. Swift Pointing and the Association between Gamma-Ray Bursts and Gravitational Wave Bursts
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 607, no. 1, pp. 384–390, 2004
  12. Gravitational Waves from Extragalactic Inspiraling Binaries: Selection Effects and Expected Detection Rates
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 612, no. 1, pp. 364–374, 2004
  13. Detector description and performance for the first coincidence observations between LIGO and GEO
    Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, vol. 517, no. 1-3, pp. 154–179, 2004
  14. Overview of the BlockNormal event trigger generator
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 21, no. 20, pp. S1705–S1710, 2004
  15. Plans for the LIGO–TAMA joint search for gravitational wave bursts
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 21, no. 20, pp. S1801–S1807, 2004
  16. Black-hole spectroscopy: testing general relativity through gravitational-wave observations
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 787–803, 2004
  17. Upper limits on the strength of periodic gravitational waves from PSR J1939+2134
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. S671–S676, 2004
  18. Swift pointing and gravitational-wave bursts from gamma-ray burst events
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 20, no. 17, pp. S815–S820, 2003
  19. No statistical excess in EXPLORER/NAUTILUS observations in the year 2001
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. L37–L44, 2003
  20. Erratum: Data conditioning for gravitational wave detectors: A Kalman filter for regressing suspension violin modes [Phys. Rev. D 63, 062004 (2001)]
    Physical Review D, vol. 67, no. 10, 2003
  21. Bounding the graviton mass with binary pulsar observations
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 1355–1360, 2002
  22. A technique to modulate the signature of a stochastic gravitational wave background
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 19, no. 7, pp. 1485–1492, 2002
  23. Bounding the mass of the graviton using binary pulsar observations
    Physical Review D, vol. 65, no. 4, 2002
  24. Data conditioning for gravitational wave detectors: A Kalman filter for regressing suspension violin modes
    Physical Review D, vol. 63, no. 6, 2001
  25. Aperture synthesis for gravitational-wave data analysis: Deterministic sources
    Physical Review D, vol. 63, no. 10, 2001
  26. Modulating the experimental signature of a stochastic gravitational wave background
    Physical Review D, vol. 64, no. 8, 2001
  27. Spectral methods for numerical relativity: The initial data problem
    Physical Review D, vol. 62, no. 8, 2000
  28. Gravitational waves from a compact star in a circular, inspiral orbit, in the equatorial plane of a massive, spinning black hole, as observed by LISA
    Physical Review D, vol. 62, no. 12, 2000
  29. Gravitational waves from solar oscillations: Proposal for a transition-zone test of general relativity
    Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 381–402, 1999
  30. The laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory scientific data archive
    Future Generation Computer Systems, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 123–134, 1999
  31. Detecting an association between gamma ray and gravitational wave bursts
    Physical Review D, vol. 60, no. 12, 1999
  32. Gravitational Wave Extraction and Outer Boundary Conditions by Perturbative Matching
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 80, no. 9, pp. 1812–1815, 1998
  33. Boosted Three-Dimensional Black-Hole Evolutions with Singularity Excision
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 80, no. 12, pp. 2512–2516, 1998
  34. Stable Characteristic Evolution of Generic Three-Dimensional Single-Black-Hole Spacetimes
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 80, no. 18, pp. 3915–3918, 1998
  35. Binary inspiral, gravitational radiation, and cosmology
    Physical Review D, vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 2878–2894, 1996
  36. Observational Constraints on the Neutron Star Mass Distribution
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 73, no. 14, pp. 1878–1881, 1994
  37. The last three minutes: Issues in gravitational-wave measurements of coalescing compact binaries
    Physical Review Letters, vol. 70, no. 20, pp. 2984–2987, 1993
  38. Gravitational radiation, inspiraling binaries, and cosmology
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 411, p. L5, 1993
  39. Gravitational radiation from a particle in circular orbit around a black hole. II. Numerical results for the nonrotating case
    Physical Review D, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 1511–1518, 1993
  40. Observing binary inspiral in gravitational radiation: One interferometer
    Physical Review D, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 2198–2219, 1993
  41. Detection, measurement, and gravitational radiation
    Physical Review D, vol. 46, no. 12, pp. 5236–5249, 1992
  42. Detectability of Gravitational Radiation from Stellar-Core Collapse
    Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 631, no. 1 Nonlinear Pro, pp. 156–172, 1991
  43. Trompe L'Oeil 'binary' pulsars
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 348, p. 226, 1990
  44. Determining gravitational radiation from Newtonian self-gravitating systems
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 351, p. 588, 1990
  45. Spin-down of rapidly rotating neutron stars
    The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 359, p. 444, 1990