Photos

Testing Gravity 2025 29 Jan - 1 Feb 2025, SFU Harbour Center, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Home

Program

Travel Info

Local Info

Subscribe for Updates

Testing Gravity 2025 will be the 5th Testing Gravity conference hosted by Simon Fraser University. Held at the SFU Harbour Centre Jan 29th - Feb 1st, 2025, it will bring together leading experts on various ways of testing laws of gravity. Testing Gravity remains a topical theme because of the unexplained nature of dark matter and dark energy and the long-standing failure to reconcile gravity with quantum physics. Like the previous meetings, TG2025 will feature latest updates from gravitational wave and astrophysical observatories, lab-based experiments, as well as discussions of recent theoretical advances. The conference aims to provide theorists working on extensions of General Relativity with a realistic perspective on what aspects of their theories can be tested. On the other hand, the experimentalists and observers will get a chance to learn about new ideas that their experiments can test.Wednesday, January 29th, will feature a "school" with five review lectures given by some of the invited speakers providing background into the key topics covered by the conference. The main conference, Jan 30th - Feb 1st, will include invited and contributed talks, and a poster session.

Topics on Agenda:gravitational wavesastrophysical tests, pulsars, black holesterrestrial laboratory tests, gravity on short distancescosmological probes: CMB, 21 cm, redshift surveys, weak lensingparticle cosmology, dark mattermodified gravity theoriesquantum gravity and emergent gravityWednesday School Lectures:introduction to general relativity by Jeremy Heylalternative gravity theories by Kazuya Koyamagravitational waves and their sources by Luis Lehnercosmological tests of gravity by Bhuvnesh Jain Special Issue:

• Special Issue "Selected Papers from Testing Gravity 2023"

Conference Program:

• download full conference program
• download directions and local info

Conference Organizers:Andrei Frolov (SFU)David McKeen (TRIUMF)Lia Medeiros (Princeton)Hamid Mirpoorian (SFU)Levon Pogosian (SFU)Michael Ross (Washington)Douglas Scott (UBC)Alessandra Silvestri (Leiden)contact organizing committeeCode of Conduct:code of conduct

Invited Speakers:Tessa Baker (Portsmouth)Martin Bojowald (Penn State)Clare Burrage (Nottingham)Alessandra Buonanno (MPG)Andrea Capra (TRIUMF/CERN)Alejandro Cárdenas-Avendaño (Princeton)Daniel Carney (LBNL)Chi-kwan Chan (Arizona)Giorgio Gratta (Stanford)Lam Hui (Columbia)Bhuvnesh Jain (UPenn)Justin Khoury (UPenn)Kazuya Koyama (Portsmouth)Luis Lehner (Perimeter)Eugene Lim (King’s College)Jess McIver (UBC)Lia Medeiros (Princeton)Will Percival (PI/Waterloo)Adam Pound (Southampton)Michael Ross (Washington)Gray Rybka (Washington)Misao Sasaki (IPMU)Mark Trodden (UPenn)Douglas Tuckler (TRIUMF)Gautam Venugopalan (Stanford)Filippo Vernizzi (CEA/Saclay)Sarah Vigeland (Wisconsin-Milwaukee)Registered Participants:current registered participant list

The registration fee is 400 CAD for regular and 200 CAD for student participants if paid prior to December 9th, 2024. After that, the fees increase at 500 and 300 CAD respectively. Banquet tickets are 80 CAD per person.The additional fee for attendance of the pre-conference school is 25 CAD. The school will feature five lectures by some of the invited conference speakers. Lectures will cover an introduction to General Relativity (GR), binary systems and gravitational waves, neutron stars and astrophysical tests of GR, review of alternative gravity theories, and cosmological tests of GR. Registration closes January 27th, 2025. Cancellations are subject to 10% penalty, with no refunds after January 10th, 2025. Payment of registration fees is processed online by SFU Meeting, Event and Conference Services. All credit card transactions will be processed in Canadian dollars and are subject to current exchange rates and 5% GST.

Add to Calendar

Fees increase December 9th, 2024

Register Now

Workshop Venue:The meeting will take place in the SFU Harbour Centre, located near the waterfront in the downtown Vancouver core. It is easily accessible from the airport and is surrounded by a vibrant neighbourhood.

Accommodations:Delta Vancouver Suites:550 West Hastings St. (across the street, 239 CAD/night+17.5% tax) Book using this weblink no later than December 12th, 2024. Alternatively, you can call Marriott Reservations at +1(844)254-5048 and provide the code "Testing Gravity" to get the above rate.Sandman Hotel Vancouver:180 West Georgia St. (10 mins walk, 135 CAD/night+17.5% tax) Book using this weblink no later than January 14th, 2025, to get the special rate. If booking via the generic hotel website or by phone, provide the code "Testing Gravity 2025 - Attendees", or block ID 387717.

For your travel plans reference, the pre-workshop school will start at 9 am on Wednesday, January 18th. The workshop will start at 9 am on Thursday, January 19th and end on Saturday, January 21st. Conference dinner is planned for the evening of Friday, January 20th. Arriving the evening before the meeting starts is probably the best way to schedule your travel, and you can stay a few extra days for a weekend in the city or on ski slopes. Further informaton about local attractions will be posted on local info page.

Getting to Vancouver:Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is well connected to major airports in Asia and Europe and cities throughout Canada and USA. Deals can often be found on holiday airlines, such as Air Transat and Thomas Cook from Europe, or ZipAir from Japan. The best option for getting from YVR to the city is via Sky Train.Alternative Airports:Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre (CXH) is a seaplane terminal located within a 10 min walk from SFU Harbour Centre. An exciting option for people arriving from the University of Victoria, assuming the weather collaborates.Bellingham International Airport (BLI), across the US border, is about 85 km (53 miles) away from downtown Vancouver. Flying to BLI can be an inexpensive option if travelling from cities on the west coast of the US.Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) is 250 km (153 miles) away from downtown Vancouver. Flying to SEA can be a more economical option, even after taking the cost of the rental car into account.By Car:If you are coming from US by car, border crossing times depend on the time of the day. 10-20 mins wait is normal during non-peak times, but can easily be an hour if you happen to venture at the wrong time. You can get an idea about the crossing time statistics on various websites.By Ferry:BC Ferries runs several regular ferry lines connecting Vancouver Island to the Mainland. The closest terminal to downtown Vancouver is Tsawwassen. Although Horseshoe Bay terminal is not much further away, it is located on the North Shore. Connection over Lions Gate Bridge could be problematic during rush hour.

download printed directions or visit interactive map

>

Places to Eat:SteamworksBonchazLa TaqueriaNubaEbisu on RobsonBanana LeafShizen YaCafe CrepeZefferelli'sThe NaamThings to Do:Harbour Centre TowerThe SeawallStanley ParkGranville IslandVancouver AquariumUBC Museum of AnthropologyFly Over CanadaCapilano Suspension BridgeGrouse Mountain GondolaVisit WhistlerGetting Around:Transit App for mobile devicesTransLink Vancouver websiteDownhill Skiing:Cypress MountainGrouse MountainMount SeymourWhistler BlackcombMt Baker Ski AreaX-Country Skiing:Cypress MountainCallaghan CountryBackcountry Skiing:check current avalanche conditions!

Wed Jan 29 - The School 08:00 Registration Desk OpensThu Jan 30 - Workshop Day 1 08:00 Registration Desk OpensFri Jan 31 - Workshop Day 2 08:30 Registration Desk OpensSat Feb 1 - Workshop Day 3 09:00 Registration Desk Opens 09:00-10:15 Jeremy Heyl Introduction to General Relativity 08:55 Workshop Starts Welcome from organizers 09:00-09:30 Alessandra Buonanno Testing General Relativity through the inspiral, merger, and ringdown of a binary coalescence 09:30-10:00 Luis Lehner Testing gravity in the strong gravity regime, challenges and options 10:00-10:30 Michael Ross New experimental tests of gravity from Eot-Wash group 09:00-09:30 Tessa Baker Cosmology with gravitational wave sirens 09:30-10:00 Eugene Lim Testing inflation with numerical relativity 10:00-10:30 Kazuya Koyama Simulations and nonlinearities beyond LCDM 10:00-10:30 Mark Trodden Tidal Love numbers of analog black holes 11:00-12:15 Kazuya Koyama Alternative gravity theories 11:00-11:30 Sarah Vigeland Testing gravity with pulsar timing arrays 11:30-11:45 Meng-Xiang Lin Testing gravity with realistic gravitational waveforms in pulsar timing arrays 11:45-12:00 Giorgio Gratta The short distance gravity program at Stanford 12:00-12:25 Gautam Venugopalan Suspended animation - an optomechanical test of short-range gravity 12:25-12:35 Chengjie Jia Experimental search for new short range interactions with Mossbauer spectroscopy 11:00-11:30 Lia Medeiros ETH tests of gravity: what we’ve learned so far and what’s to come 11:30-12:00 Bhuvnesh Jain Testing beyond wCDM models with higher statistics 12:00-12:30 Adam Pound High-precision waveform modeling in and beyond GR: the self-force approach 11:00-11:30 Filippo Vernizzi Vanishing of quadratic Love numbers of Schwarzschild black holes 11:30-12:00 Andrea Capra Observation of the gravitational free-fall of antihydrogen with ALPHA-g at CERN 12:00-12:15 Alice Garoffolo Proper time path integrals for gravitational waves 12:15-12:30 Valerio De Luca New insights into tidal Love numbers Lunch Break 12:30-14:00 (various locations)Lunch Break 12:35-14:00 (various locations)Lunch Break 12:30-14:00 (various locations)Lunch Break 12:30-14:00 (various locations) 14:00-15:15 Luis Lehner Gravitational waves and their sources 14:00-14:30 Jessica Mclver Testing gravity with gravitational waves 14:30-15:00 Daniel Carney Testing quantum gravity 15:00-15:30 Lam Hui Nonlinear static tidal deformation of black holes 14:00-14:30 Gray Rybka The search for axion dark matter (and gravitational waves) with ADMX 14:30-15:00 Clare Burrage Searching for screened scalar fields 15:00-15:15 Suvendu Giri The curvature dependence of gravitational-wave tests of General Relativity 15:15-15:30 Benjamin Elder Searching for dark energy, dark matter, and modified gravity with pairs of atomic clocks 14:00-14:15 Daniela Saadeh A field-level emulator for modified gravity 14:15-14:45 Misao Sasaki Probing parity violating gravitational waves with the large-scale structure of the universe 14:45-15:15 Chi-Kwan Chan Testing gravity and astrophysical models with EHT observations 15:15-15:30 Alessandra Silvestri Conference Summary 16:00-17:15 Bhuvnesh Jain Cosmological tests of gravity 16:00-16:30 Will Percival Measuring H0 and dark energy with DESI 16:30-17:00 Justin Khoury Gravitational memory and soft theorems: the local perspective 17:00-17:10 Hiromi Saida Current result of PPN test of black hole spacetime by observing the star S0-2 orbiting around the galactic central massive black hole Sgr A* 17:10-17:20 Jonathan Barenboim Evaporating non-singular black holes in 2D gravity 17:20-17:25 Ali Nezhadsafavi Cosmic strings in the complex symmetron model 17:25-17:35 Alan Knee Searching for continuous gravitational waves with a hidden Markov model 17:35-17:45 Conner Dailey Formulating the complete initial boundary value problem in numerical relativity to model black hole echoes 17:45-17:55 Shiming Gu Cosmic shear without small physical scales 16:00-16:30 Douglas Tuckler Dark matter 16:30-17:00 Martin Bojowald Emergent modified gravity 17:00-17:10 Akira Taniguchi Search for high-frequency gravitational waves with Rydberg atoms 17:10-17:20 Kate Taylor Null orbits in the Ernst-Wild geometry: exact and perturbative insights on black holes immersed in a magnetic field 17:20-17:30 Hamid Mirpoorian Modified recombination and the Hubble tension Registration Open Until 19:00Poster Session and Reception 18:00-20:00 (snacks & cash bar)Conference Dinner 19:00 (Al Porto on Waterfront)

download full conference program or all talk and poster abstracts as PDF files for printing all talks will be held at 1900 Fletcher Challenge Theatre

Registered Participants: Arefe Abghari (UBC)Eric Adelberger (Washington)Shoshana Apple (Washington)Tessa Baker (Portsmouth)Guruvayurappan Balaji (UBC)Jonathan Barenboim (SFU)Martin Bojowald (PennState)Jack Broyles (Control Valve Science Ltd)Clare Burrage (Nottingham)Hugo Candan (Paris/Sorbonne)Andrea Capra (TRIUMF)Michael Carlson (Private)Daniel Carney (Berkeley National Lab)Chi-kwan Chan (Arizona)Conner Dailey (Perimeter)Valerio De Luca (UPenn)Henrique de Oliveira (Rio de Janeiro State)Benjamin Elder (Imperial College London)Kye Emond (SFU)Heather Fong (UBC)Andrei Frolov (SFU)Alice Garoffolo (UPenn)Douglas Gingrich (Alberta/TRIUMF)Suvendu Giri (Perimeter)S. R. Gonzales Guerrero (UNI, Peru)Narasimha Gosala (Lethbridge)Giorgio Gratta (Stanford)Shiming Gu (UBC)Brit Holland (MPI for Gravitational Physics)Yuki Horii (Rikkyo)Lam Hui (Columbia)Hayato Imafuku (Tokyo)Bhuvnesh Jain (UPenn)Chengjie Jia (Stanford)Mohammed Khalil (Perimeter)Brandon Khek (UPenn)Justin Khoury (UPenn)Demet Kirmizibayrak (UBC)Alan Knee (UBC)Branko Kovac (ASGRG)Kazuya Koyama (Portsmouth)Lucas Kuhn (UBC)Luis Lehner (Perimeter)Xunyu Liang (UBC)Eugene Lim (King's College London)David Lindsay (Retired)Meng-Xiang Lin (UPenn)Fereshteh Majidi (UBC)Jessica McIver (UBC)Lia Medeiros (Wisconsin-Milwaukee)David Miller (UBC)S. H. Mirpoorian (SFU)Gopolang Mohlabeng (SFU)Ali Nezhadsafavi (SFU)Sam Patrick (King's College London)Will Percival (Waterloo/Perimeter)J. D. Peñalba Quispitupa (UNI, Peru)Levon Pogosian (SFU)Adam Pound (Southampton)Guillermo Quispe (SFU)Marek Radzikowski (Fort Modular)Michael Ross (Washington)Gray Rybka (Washington)Daniela Saadeh (Portsmouth)Hiromi Saida (Daido)Jin Saito (Rikkyo)Misao Sasaki (Kavli IPMU, Tokyo)Douglas Scott (UBC)Michael Sekatchev (UBC)Shafayat Shawqi (Alberta)Alessandra Silvestri (Leiden)Hajime Sotani (Kochi)Hrishabh Srivastava (UBC)Akira Taniguchi (Kyushu)Pouya Tanouri (UBC)Kate Taylor (UVic)Jonathan Thornburg (Retired)Mark Trodden (UPenn)Douglas Tuckler (TRIUMF and SFU)Gautam Venugopalan (Stanford)Filippo Vernizzi (IPhT, CEA/Saclay)Sarah Vigeland (Wisconsin-Milwaukee)Ziyang Zheng (ITP, Heidelberg)

All participants, including attendees and organizers, will treat each other with respect and conduct themselves in a professional manner that is welcoming to everyone and free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation. While scientific debate is encouraged, discriminatory, harassing, or bullying behaviour or action of any kind will not be tolerated, and will result in immediate removal from this conference. This includes but is not limited to any form of sexual harassment, intimidation, threatening behaviour, sustained disruption, use of offensive or demeaning language including inappropriate jokes, unwanted photography, making statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law in British Columbia or Canada. If you believe that you have been subject to or have witnessed behaviour that violates this code of conduct, please report it immediately to any of the conference organizers.