NP3M Seminars (Virtual)
All talks are on an NP3M zoom channel on Thursdays at 3pm EDT
- Aug. 24th, Cecilia Chirenti, Univ. Maryland (slides)
- Sept. 7th, Evan O'Connor, Stockholm Univ. (slides)
- Sept. 21th, Anuradha Gupta, Univ. Mississippi
- Oct. 5th, Pedro Espino, Penn State Univ.
- Oct. 19th, Luis Filippe Longo, Univ. Jena
- Nov. 2nd, Alex Friedland, SLAC
- Nov. 16th, Alexander Haber, Wash. Univ. St. Louis
- Nov. 30th, David Vartanyan, Carnegie Sci. Inst.
- Dec. 14th, Luke Johns, Los Alamos Natl. Lab.
Title: Effect of Missing Physics on Tests of General Relativity with Gravitational Waves
Abstract: The observation of gravitational waves has enabled us to carry out stringent tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity (GR) in previously inaccessible regions of strong gravity. No violation of GR has been found so far but the improved detector sensitivity will detect binaries in configurations which are never seen before and may reveal features that are different from GR. There were a couple of events in GWTC-3 that showed hints of GR deviation though further investigations are needed since the deviation could be due to the use of imperfect waveform models or poorly understood noise artifacts in the data. In this talk, I will discuss various causes that could potentially lead to a false GR violation and what we can do to mitigate them. I'll also show results from our recent study on the effect of missing eccentricity on tests of GR and how it led to false GR violations. The gravitational wave community has to exclude the possibility of such causes (like an eccentric binary) in order to make any claim of a GR violation.