Please join us on Monday, Feb 12 for a talk by Dr. Sylvia Biscoveanu from Northwestern University titled:
Compact-object astrophysics with gravitational waves and their electromagnetic counterparts

The growing catalog of over one hundred detected gravitational-wave signals from compact-object mergers is enabling studies of the properties of black hole and neutron star binaries with increasing precision. However, the processes governing the formation and evolution of these systems and their electromagnetic counterparts remain largely unconstrained. The current observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra gravitational-wave detector network has already doubled the number of observed sources, and the next generation of detectors will be sensitive to nearly all compact-object mergers across cosmic time. In this talk, I will highlight how measurements of the population properties of black hole and neutron star binaries can be used to constrain the astrophysical processes driving their formation and evolution, focusing on binary black hole spins and neutron star-black hole mergers. I will conclude by contextualizing the prospects for probing compact-object astrophysics with gravitational waves within the observational landscape of the next decade.