Gravity seminar - Evan Hall [NOTE UNUSUAL TIME: 13:00] Seminar

Abstract: Gravitational-wave observatories have registered 90 collisions of black holes and neutron stars since the first detections began in 2015. Sensitivity improvements over the next few years will increase the rate of detections, yielding more information about the populations and properties of these stellar remnants, and probing fundamental physical questions about gravitation and cosmology. Efforts are underway for new and more sensitive observatories to come online in the 2030s, collecting signals from the entire stellar history of the universe and making detections with even higher signal-to-noise ratio. In Europe, these efforts are directed toward Einstein Telescope, a 10 km underground observatory, and in the United States, effort is directed toward Cosmic Explorer, a 40 km observatory on the Earth’s surface. These new observatories will leverage advancements in a number of technologies — nonclassical states of light, high-quality optical materials, inertial isolation, geophysical engineering, among others — to open a new window onto the gravitational-wave universe.