MG14 - Talk detail

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Abstract

Advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are scheduled to begin taking data later this year. As sensitivities continue to improve, we expect to not only observe gravitational waves from coalescing binary neutron stars (among other sources), but also to extract binary parameters, such as component masses and spins, from their gravitational-wave signatures. In this talk, I will address three key questions: (1) How often might we expect to observe binary neutron stars? (2) How accurately can we expect to extract the parameters of individual systems from gravitational-wave data? and (3) How can we use multiple observations to study the population of merging binaries and probe the astrophysics of their formation and evolution?

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Session

Accepted

Yes

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Time

Talk

Title

Abstract

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) weighing in at a few hundred solar masses may be generic in a both modern globular clusters and in the early Universe as seeds of today's massive black holes. However, they are extremely difficult to observe through standard methods. In this talk, I briefly review possible IMBH formation channels and existing observational evidence, and focus on the possibility of detecting IMBHs through gravitational-wave signals of IMBH binary mergers or inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects into IMBHs. I highlight the ability to extract information about IMBHs through such observations, as well as the potential to use them as probes of structure formation, dynamics, and strong-field general relativity. I end by speculating on the possible contribution of very massive stars in the low-redshift Universe to the merging IMBH population.

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