Speaker: Sarah Caudill (Nikhef)
Title: “Key Results from the Second Gravitational-wave Transient Catalog”
Abstract:
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration have released an updated catalog of gravitational wave detections [1], featuring a binary black hole (BBH) with total mass over 150 times the mass of the Sun, a BBH which shows evidence for higher multipole GW emission, a second detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star, as well as many other exciting discoveries. I will briefly discuss the detector and algorithmic developments that made these new discoveries possible in just the first six months of LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run. Then I will review what we can infer about the properties of compact object populations and what new tests of General Relativity can be performed with these recently released results.
[1] GWTC-2: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14527
This colloquium will be online only (PIN required):