Towards rapid and reliable parameter estimation for gravitational waves

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime caused by cosmic collisions like those between black holes. Since their discovery in 2015, they've opened a new window to our universe. However, analyzing just one gravitational wave signal using traditional methods takes days if not weeks. This PhD Thesis develops smart computer algorithms that dramatically speed up this analysis. By combining artificial intelligence with existing inference techniques, we can now determine where gravitational waves come from and what properties their sources have in minutes rather than weeks. Our new methods can even untangle overlapping gravitational waves and work well even for smaller black holes, which was previously challenging. As detectors become more sensitive, thousands of gravitational waves will be detected each year. Thanks to this research, scientists can analyze this flood of cosmic signals quickly and reliably, leading to new astronomical discoveries.