When: Thursday, March 30, 2023, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PMWhere: zoom
Speaker: Tessa Baker, Reader in Cosmology at QM
Tessa Baker is a Reader in Cosmology and a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the QMUL Department of Physics & Astronomy
Zoom link: https://qmul-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81148100921
Title: Cosmology with Gravitational Waves
Abstract: Gravitational waves are minute ripples in the medium of spacetime that fills our universe; they are produced by some of the most energetic events imaginable, such as the merger of two black holes. Though first theorised by Albert Einstein in 1916, the existence of gravitational waves was not experimentally confirmed until their first direct detection in 2015, nearly a century later, by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors. After three observing runs, a total of ninety-one gravitational wave detections are now in hand. These are highly complex and sometimes noisy signals, depending on a significant number of unknown astrophysical and cosmological parameters. Yet if analysed correctly, they have the potential to probe some of the most important topics in current cosmology, such as the expansion rate of the of the universe and the nature of gravity on the largest scales. Furthermore, the number of direct gravitational wave detections is set to increase dramatically over the next ten years as new and improved detectors come online.
In this talk I'll introduce some of the basic physics of gravitational waves, and explain the role QMUL researchers play in analysing these events. I'll sketch what the future data-landscape may look like, and outline some of the challenges in doing this completely new kind of astronomy.
Bio: Tessa Baker is a Reader in Cosmology and a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the QMUL Department of Physics & Astronomy. She specialises in testing General Relativity and alternative theories of gravity with the large-scale cosmic web and gravitational waves. She leads the QMUL group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and is the LISA Science Investigation chair for Fundamental Physics. She completed her training at the University of Oxford and at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.”