Searching for signatures of boson-star mergers in gravitational-wave data

by Dr Juan Calderon Bustillo (IGFAE)

Tuesday 29 Mar 2022, 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Madrid

Seminar Room (IFAE)

(Hybrid Th+Exp Seminar). To date, the gravitational-wave observatories LIGO and Virgo have detected almost one hundred compact mergers. While these have been canonically interpreted as mergers of neutron stars or black holes, there is a plethora of theoretical alternative compact objects that may produce similar signals. In particular, high-mass events for which barely any pre-merger information is available should be thoroughly compared to such alternative scenarios. In this talk I will show a possible interpretation of the high-mass event GW190521 as a boson-star merger, providing an estimate of the mass of the putative boson forming the stars. If time permits, I will also discuss the possibility of interpreting further GW events under this scenario.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89787514064?pwd=SkRaOElqanZRNFZXM2d2SE9PN1d0Zz09