Einstein’s Zoo: the hunt for new species

TALK RECORDING AVAILABLE AT: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OUNXpiVXfLfKK0drnOyUKkQzGZj6vtjc/view?usp=sharing

Abstract:

With the first direct observation of gravitational waves (GW) on September 14, 2015, the advanced GW detectors opened new possibilities to explore our Universe. The first GW signal was not from a much-anticipated binary neutron stars (BNS), but from a quite unexpected merger of binary black holes (BBH), which challenged the existing BBH formation models and inspired new insights into the evolution of massive stars. Several years later, the GW detectors have recorded two BNS and more then 90 BBH signals, including a BBH merger on May 21, 2019 – a possible missing link between stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes. That was another unexpected GW event,  which has far-reaching astrophysical implications and marks the beginning of an active research on a new class of BBH sources. Future observations with improving LIGO detectors are likely to discover anticipated or possibly new GW sources - we should be ready for unexpected. I will talk about LIGO observations, detection of transient (burst) GW signals from a wide range of potential astrophysical sources, detection challenges for signals with poorly known or uncertain models and discuss astrophysical implications of the burst analysis.