PHY529 Advanced Topics in General Relativity and Gravitational Waves

Gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy has emerged as one of the most promising fields for probing fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology. This course aims to introduce the current state-of-the-art of the field to interested master and PhD students, outlining fundamental concepts of GW science and data analysis and their application in observations with the current generation of ground-based GW instruments. The goal of this course is to instigate interest and provide the (hands-on) knowledge required to delve into the current results in gravitational-wave astronomy.

Topics:

• Introduction: History of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Introduction: Observations of stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars
• Linearized gravity (a primer)
• Astrophysical sources of gravitational waves
• Source modeling of compact binary coalescence (CBC)
• Template-based searches and interpretation of CBC
• Data analysis of generic transients, stochastic GW background, continuous waves
• Current catalog of GW observations & science discoveries
• Future GW instruments and data analysis challenges