Special TAPIR Seminar

Friday, June 23, 2023

2:00pm to 3:00pm

Online and In-Person Event

Black-hole Spectroscopy: Searching for Overtones and Harmonics in Gravitational-wave Ringdowns

Eliot Finch, Graduate Student, Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, University of Birmingham,

In person: 370 Cahill -- Attendees joining in person must have a valid Caltech UID.

ABSTRACT: The gravitational-wave ringdown signal, the endpoint of a binary black-hole (BH) merger, can be modelled as a sum of quasinormal modes (QNMs). The QNM spectrum is completely determined by the remnant BH mass and spin, and so a measurement of a QNM frequency provides a way to directly determine the BH properties. A measurement of multiple QNMs in a BH's ringdown allows for powerful and clean tests of the Kerr metric and general relativity, and is an area of great interest in ringdown analysis.

I will summarise existing searches for subdominant QNMs in both numerical simulations and real data (including overtones, higher harmonics, and nonlinear QNMs). In addition, I will present details of a novel frequency-domain analysis method, along with recent results from analyses of GW150914 and GW190521.

For more information, please contact JoAnn Boyd by phone at 626-395-4280 or by email at [email protected].

Event Series

TAPIR Seminar Series

Event Sponsors

Theoretical AstroPhysics Including Relativity and Cosmology (TAPIR) More Events from this Sponsor