Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2018 Annual Meeting of the APS Mid-Atlantic Section
Volume 63, Number 20
Friday–Sunday, November 9–11, 2018; College Park, Maryland
Session F01: Gravity and Cosmology |
Hide Abstracts |
Chair: Jamie Holder, University of Delaware Room: Edward St. John 1224 |
Saturday, November 10, 2018 1:30PM - 2:06PM |
F01.00001: LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave observations, and what we are learning from the detected signals Invited Speaker: Peter S. Shawhan The Advanced LIGO gravitational wave (GW) detectors have completed two observing runs, and were joined by the Virgo GW detector for the last month of the second run. Since the first LIGO detection of GWs from a binary black hole merger in September 2015, more black hole mergers have been recorded and we are starting to get a picture of the properties and population of such systems. In addition, a remarkable binary neutron star merger was detected in August 2017, the first instance of this long-awaited GW event type. Besides kicking off a historic multi-messenger observing campaign, detailed analysis of the waveform has provided information about the tidal deformability and nuclear physics of neutron stars. I will summarize the GW observations, tests of General Relativity that have been carried out so far, and astrophysics insights that have been obtained. |
Saturday, November 10, 2018 2:06PM - 2:18PM |
F01.00002: Measurement and Analysis of Uncertainty in Mechanical Quality Factor and Implications for LIGO Thermal-Noise Estimation Ian A MacMillan, Gregory M Harry With the continued push for more-sensitive gravitational wave interferometers, reducing coating Brownian thermal noise becomes increasingly essential. We report on the uncertainty in quality factor experiments, which are key measurements for predicting the thermal noise of the optics in gravitational wave detectors. Through repeated measurements, we investigate the distribution associated with quality factor measurements. We estimate these uncertainties in mechanical loss measurements and discuss their possible causes. Finally, we comment on the implications of our results for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO. |
Saturday, November 10, 2018 2:18PM - 2:30PM |
F01.00003: Adapting Wavelet-based Techniques to Photometrically Classify Cosmological Samples of Supernova Linoy Kotler, Gautham Narayan The Pan-STARRS Medium Deep Survey hosted at the Space Telescope Science Institute is the best source of archival multi-band photometry prior to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Working with a multi-faceted classification pipeline, called SNMachine, we classified different supernovae based on their light curves. We first trained a classifier, named ‘Random Forest’, on simulated data, for which the different types of the supernovae were known, and then applied the classifier to real data, using the largest homogeneous sample of photometric SNIa. This made it possible to determine the probability of each supernova to be classified as type Ia. The classified sample was then used to construct a Hubble diagram in order to measure the rate of expansion of the universe, as well as the equation of state of dark energy. |
Saturday, November 10, 2018 2:30PM - 3:06PM |
F01.00004: The New Era of Gravitational Wave Counterparts Invited Speaker: Judith L Racusin The first detection of gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars brought about an array of electromagnetic counterparts including a coincident short gamma-ray burst, an evolving blue to red kilonova, and a late-time afterglow from the interaction of the jet with the surrounding environment. This was the first time that all of these components were detected together and by far the nearest neutron star merger ever measured. In this talk, I’ll describe this important discovery, what we have learned from it and its impact on topics from jet physics to cosmology. GW170817 kicked off just the beginning of a new era of discovery as we look forward to more sensitive gravitational wave detectors and has inspired a new fleet of ground- and space-based observatories designed to study them. |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700