Gravity seminar - Andrew Levan Seminar

Short duration gamma-ray bursts form a distinct population of extreme high energy transients, whose origin has been mysterious for much of the 40+ years since their first discovery. I will review observations taken since the launch of the Swift satellite in 2005 which finally offer the possibility of constraining their progenitors, culminating in the very recent discovery of likely radioactive (kilonova) emission which pinpoints their origins in compact object binary mergers. With the progenitors now "in-hand" I will discuss what short GRBs can tell us about binary evolution, and the implications for their detection with next generation gravitational wave detectors.