Black holes, neutron stars and the birth of gravitational wave astronomy

by Laura Cadonati (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Wednesday 10 Jul 2019, 12:00 → 13:30 Europe/Madrid

IFAE Seminar Room

Gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by catastrophic astrophysical events, are arguably the most elusive prediction of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, so feeble that Einstein himself thought their detection would be impossible. One hundred years later, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and its sister project Virgo have observed multiple gravitational wave signals from the collision of pairs of black holes, a groundbreaking discovery that opened a new observational window on the Universe. An equally momentous discovery took place on August 17, 2017, with the first detection of gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars in coincidence with a gamma ray burst and followed by the identification of an optical transient and the multi-wavelenght observation of a kilonova by the worldwide astronomy community. We are now in a new era of multi-messenger astrophysics, where gravitational waves are a new important probe in the universe. This talk will present the current status of the LIGO and Virgo detectors, our most recent results, the implications for gravitational wave astronomy and the outlook for future generations of gravitational wave detectors.

 

Bio

Dr. Laura Cadonati is Professor in the School of Physics and the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (CRA) at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta. Her research interests include gravitational waves and particle astrophysics, with focus on the detection, characterization and astrophysical interpretation of short-duration gravitational wave signals that are produced by cataclysmic astrophysical events such as the collisions of black holes or core collapse supernovae.  She is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) since 2002, and a past member of the Borexino solar neutrino collaboration. Dr. Cadonati was recently deputy spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and past chair of the LIGO Data Analysis Council. She received her undergraduate degree in Italy, with a Laurea in Physics at the University of Milano, and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), has chaired the APS Division of Gravity, and was awarded an NSF Career Award and the 2018 GeorgiaTech outstanding faculty research author award.

2019-07-10-IFAE.pdf