Speaker: Prof. Chad Hanna

Host: Dr. Surabhi Sachdev

Title: Recent gravitational wave discoveries from LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA

Abstract:

 The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration completed its 30-month-long fourth observing run late last year where hundreds of new gravitational wave sources comprised of neutron stars and black holes were identified.  These discoveries included the clearest gravitational wave sources yet which provided unprecedented tests of general relativity, and unexpectedly massive black holes. In this presentation I will present recent results from the fourth observing run and describe plans for the next observing run which starts this fall.

Bio: Chad Hanna is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics, a co-hire of the Institute for Computational and Data Science (ICDS), and a member of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos (IGC) at Penn State. His research focuses on the detection and characterization of gravitational waves from merging neutron stars an black holes with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and he leads efforts to detect gravitational waves in real-time to support multi-messenger astrophysics.