Physics and Astrophysics of Gravitational Waves

Bad Honnef Physics School

08 Sep - 13 Sep 2019

Where:

Physikzentrum Bad Honnef

Scientific organizers:

Prof. Dr. Bernd Brügmann, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schäfer, U Jena • Prof. Dr. Kostas Kokkotas, U Tübingen

The School is a theoretical school which teaches the physics and astrophysics of gravitational waves (GWs) in view of full-fledged applications. Various scientists from the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations will be involved, including the LIGO spokesperson at the time of the first detection of GWs. Basic knowledge of general relativity (GR) and relativistic astrophysics on the level of a Bachelor curriculum is expected. Discussion and exercise sessions will allow the participants to deepen their understanding of the lectures. Advanced participants are invited to present posters or to give short talks.

The opening lecture will be of general type, presenting the essentials of GR and how GWs arise in GR. The physics of GWs will be taught covering their generation, propagation, polarization, and measurement. Introducing and applying numerical relativity, astrophysical sources of GWs will be described (vibrating neutron stars and black holes, core collapse to neutron stars or black holes, binary neutron stars and black holes). The detection of GWs will find detailed presentation followed by the theory of GW data analysis with applications to the measured GWs. Furthermore, the to be detected stochastic GW background will be discussed. In the Evening Talk on Wednesday a broad overview of GR will be presented, which covers all measurements related to GR, in particular celebrating 100 years of light-deflection measurements.