Uncovering the Dynamics of Spacetime

Speaker

William East, Perimeter Institute

Abstract

With the ground-breaking gravitational wave detections from LIGO/Virgo, we have entered a new era where we can actually observe the action of strongly curved spacetime originally predicted by Einstein.  Going hand in hand with this, there has been a renaissance in the theoretical and computational tools we use to understand and interpret the dynamics of gravity and matter in this regime.  I will describe some of the rich behavior exhibited by sources of gravitational waves such as the mergers of black holes and neutron stars. I will also discuss some of the open questions, and what these events could teach us, not only about the extremes of gravity, but about the behavior of matter at extreme densities, the solution of astrophysical mysteries, and even the existence of new types of particles.