Physics Club March 4, 2024

Aaron Zimmerman, University of Texas at Austin “Gravitational waves and searching for the unexpected”
The detection of gravitational waves has revealed an invisible side of the Universe. Observations of gravitational waves from black holes and neutron stars allow us to test our understanding of dynamical spacetime, study matter at extreme densities, and measure the expansion history of our Universe in new ways. Gravitational wave data also provides opportunities for unexpected discoveries. In this talk I will give an overview of gravitational wave detections made by the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations. I will then discuss two avenues for future discovery with gravitational waves: direct searches for exotic stars, and black hole spectroscopy using ringdown.