Shanika Galaudage (Monash University)

S. Galaudage Colloquium : Investigating the lives of black holes and neutron stars with gravitational waves.

Webex

Abstract

The field of gravitational-wave astronomy provides us with a wealth of information about the most extreme objects in the Universe. Since 2015, there have been over 90 detections of merging black holes and neutron stars. With the growing number of gravitational wave events, we can study the overall population of events, allowing us to probe stellar evolution and formation mechanisms of these compact binaries. In this talk, I describe the emerging picture of the formation of binary black hole systems using observations from LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. I will also present some insights into the population of binary neutron stars, and the implications for radio and gravitational-wave astronomy.