String Theory Seminars

A new independent analysis of LIGO data: methods and results

by Prof. Tejaswi Venumadhav (IAS, Princeton)

Monday, December 30, 2019 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at A304
Description
The Advanced LIGO and VIRGO observatories detected several gravitational-wave events in their first and second observing runs from 2015 to 2017. The detections were only possible due to sophisticated analyses of noisy strain data that were historically conducted within the collaboration. Recently, we developed an entirely independent analysis of LIGO data that improved its reach by rigorously accounting for inherent systematics, and thereby identified nine new binary black-hole mergers within, including an event with the highest spin reported to date. In this talk, I will provide a birds-eye view of the process used to make these detections.