Friday 21 November, 11.00h, at the Veltman Centre at Nikhef
Speaker: Maria Haney (Nikhef)
Title: “Gravitational-wave discoveries from LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA’s fourth observing run”
Abstract:
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration recently published the fourth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0), which includes more than 200 confident detections of merging compact objects — primarily black-hole binaries — and expands our view into the gravitational-wave Universe. In this talk I will present notable gravitational-wave candidates from the fourth observing run of LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA, highlighting the detector upgrades and improved analysis techniques that made these discoveries possible. I will outline key scientific results enabled by the new detections: insights into the formation and evolution of merging compact binaries, cosmological measurements and precise tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime.
This colloquium will be hybrid: