Jess McIver

Speaker: Jess McIver, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia
Title: The hunt for gravitational waves: new results from LIGO-Virgo’s third observing run 
Date: March 12, 2021
Time: 1:30 pm (PST)
Location: Remote delivery

Abstract

In less than five years, the field of gravitational wave astronomy has grown from a groundbreaking first discovery to revealing new populations of stellar remnants through distant cosmic collisions. LIGO-Virgo has now reported 50 known compact object mergers, including the discovery of an intermediate mass black hole. I'll summarize recent results from LIGO-Virgo, give an overview of how we infer the properties of gravitational wave sources, and discuss challenges for confidently identifying and recovering these signals from glitchy, unpredictable Advanced LIGO detector data.