UNRAVELING BINARY EVOLUTION FROM GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE SIGNALS AND SOURCE STATISTICS

The next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are likely to observe gravitational waves from the coalescences of compact-objects binaries. We describe the state of the art for predictions of the rate of compact-binary coalescences and report on initial efforts to develop a framework for converting gravitational-wave observations into improved constraints on astrophysical parameters.