Würzburg 2018 – scientific programme

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AKjDPG: Arbeitskreis junge DPG

AKjDPG 1: Tutorial: Gravitational Waves

AKjDPG 1.1: Tutorial

Monday, March 19, 2018, 09:00–10:30, Z6 - HS 0.001

Gravitational Waves - Theory and Observation — •Claus Kiefer — Universität zu Köln

Gravitational waves were first predicted to exist by Albert Einstein in 1916. In September 2015, they were directly detected for the first time. Since then, a couple of other events were registered, among them one for which the optical counterpart has been seen. In 2017, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for the observation of gravitational waves.

In my talk, I give a brief introduction into the physics of gravitational waves and discuss the indirect detection from observations of binary pulsars. I then describe the direct detection by laser interferometry and explain the physics behind it. I conclude with a brief outlook on gravitational wave astronomy and on the role that gravitational waves play for cosmology and quantum gravity.

Ref.: D. Giulini and C. Kiefer, Gravitationswellen (Springer Spektrum 2017)