The Observation of Gravitational Waves at LIGO
Graduate Student Seminar
4:00 pm
Jorgensen Hall Room: 145
***This event is for graduate students only.***
Presenter: Caleb Fangmeier
Abstract
On September 14, 2015 09:50:45 UTC, the first direct observation of a gravitational wave was made by the Advanced LIGO experiment. The event, deemed GW150914, was determined to be caused by the inspiral and subsequent merger of two stellar-mass black holes. Subsequently, on December 26, 2015 03:38:53 UTC, another black hole merger event was observed. These two observations confirm the predictions of general relativity in the highly non-linear strong field regime as well as cosmological predictions of the existence of binary black hole systems. Caleb will discuss the theoretical mechanisms enabling the observation of gravitational waves, early efforts at detection, the design of the Advanced LIGO detector, the extraction of events from data, and some implications to cosmological models.
Presenter: Caleb Fangmeier
Abstract
On September 14, 2015 09:50:45 UTC, the first direct observation of a gravitational wave was made by the Advanced LIGO experiment. The event, deemed GW150914, was determined to be caused by the inspiral and subsequent merger of two stellar-mass black holes. Subsequently, on December 26, 2015 03:38:53 UTC, another black hole merger event was observed. These two observations confirm the predictions of general relativity in the highly non-linear strong field regime as well as cosmological predictions of the existence of binary black hole systems. Caleb will discuss the theoretical mechanisms enabling the observation of gravitational waves, early efforts at detection, the design of the Advanced LIGO detector, the extraction of events from data, and some implications to cosmological models.