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Caltech

TAPIR Seminar

Friday, October 15, 2021
2:00pm to 3:00pm
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Online and In-Person Event
The next frontier in gravitational wave cosmology
Jose Maria Ezquiaga, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics, The University of Chicago,

Hybrid -- To Join via Zoom -- NOTE: Unusual venue - 304 Cahill

https://caltech.zoom.us/j/89695722750

Gravitational waves (GWs) are reshaping our understanding of the universe, and the more exciting discoveries are yet to come. In the next observing runs we will observe hundreds to thousands of events per year at increasingly higher redshifts, opening unique opportunities to test our cosmological model. In this talk I will focus on how this coming data could help probing gravity and dark energy, and what new information GW lensing will provide. In the first part of the talk I will describe how, without the need for electromagnetic counterparts or galaxy catalogs, the study of the binary black hole mass distribution can constrain LCDM and Einstein's gravity. Moreover, I will show that black hole mergers are also promising laboratories to  bound GW interactions with other cosmological fields leading to waveform distortions and echoes. In the second part, I will discuss current searches for strongly lensed GWs and the importance of the GW phase measurement in this identification. Observing GW lensed events will allow us to probe the matter distribution in the universe and further constrain the laws of gravity. In both parts of the talk I will emphasize the important role of next generation ground- and space-based detectors.

For more information, please contact JoAnn Boyd by phone at 626-395-4280 or by email at [email protected].