In this workshop we will hear about the different Gravitational Waves projects at UCL: cosmological analyses of current data, preparation for future space missions and design of new detectors.
Three years ago LIGO detected the first direct observation of gravitational waves (GW), and nowadays new GW candidates are flowing in at a rate of several per month. Members of the Astrophysics group at UCL are involved in the search for optical counterparts of these events, and in the cosmological interpretation of these results. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has selected LISA as its third large-class mission, with expected launch in 2034, with an increasing involvement from UCL, in particular from MSSL. Finally, research groups at HEP and AMOPP are studying the viability of detecting gravitational waves using quantum sensors.
Organizers: Andreu Font-Ribera (Astro), Kinwah Wu (MSSL), Robert Flack (HEP), Peter Barker (AMOPP)
Date: Wednesday June 12th, 2019
Time: 14:00 - 17:00
Location: Pearson G22 LT
14:00 Welcome and presentation of the final program
14:05 Introduction to Gravitational Waves (Silvia Zane, MSSL)
14:25 Gravitational Waves: Future Techniques and Future Wavebands (Mike Cruise, Birmingham)
14:45 Gravitational Waves in the Astrophysics group
Chasing the next golden GW event with DECam (Will Hartley)
Using GWs to constrain cosmology: Can the Hubble trouble be resolved? (Constantina Nicolaou)
15:05 Gravitational Waves at MSSL
Pulsars as probes of strong-field GR (Tom Kimpson)
Covariant radiative transfer in dynamical space-time (Yichao Hu)
15:25 Coffee break
16:00 Gravitational Waves at AMOPP
Nano-object matter wave interferometric gravitational wave detection (Sougato Bose)
Detecting high frequency GWs with a levitated particle (Antonio Pontin)
16:20 Gravitational Waves at HEP
Using atom interference and BECs to detect GWs (Robert Flack)
16:30 Discussion
17:00 Drinks at the Housman Room
This workshop is supported by the Cosmoparticle Initiative as well as with collaborative visit funding from the Cosmology and Astroparticle Student and Postdoc Exchange Network (CASPEN).