Physics Colloquium

Motivated by the exciting prospect of a new wealth of information arising from the first observations of gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from the same astrophysical phenomena, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has established a search and discovery program for the optical transients associated with LIGO/Virgo events (DESGW). Using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), DESGW has contributed to the discovery of the optical transient associated with the neutron star merger GW170817, and produced the first cosmological measurements using gravitational wave events as standard sirens. We now pursue new results during the third, and ongoing, observing campaign. In this talk, I present an overview of our results, and discuss its implications for the emerging field of multi-messenger cosmology with gravitational waves and optical data.