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Astrophysics, Relativity, and Cosmology Seminar - Josu Aurrekoetxea (MIT) "Scalar fields around black hole binaries in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA"

Speaker: Josu Aurrekoetxea (MIT)
Date: 10/1/2025
Time: 11 a.m.
Location: Rhondale Tso Seminar Room, Loomis 236
Event Contact: Deanna Frye
ddebord@illinois.edu
Sponsor: Department of Physics
Event Type: Seminar/Symposium
 

Some of the most well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics introduce light scalar fields to explain the origin of dark matter. These fields interact with black holes and can alter the gravitational waveforms produced by binary merger events. In this talk, I will discuss the use of numerical relativity simulations to construct gravitational waveform templates and to search for such new physics using data from the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA detectors.