Conveners
ND. Astronomy
- Leo Piilonen (Virginia Tech)
Peter Shawhan
(University of Maryland)
10/22/11, 8:30 AM
Invited
The LIGO, GEO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have collected a few years of data with good sensitivity and have carried out searches for several types of gravitational-wave signals. I will highlight a few search results obtained so far which shed light on plausible astrophysical sources. The detectors are currently undergoing major upgrades and will run again as Advanced LIGO and...
Michael Kavic
(Long Island University)
10/22/11, 9:00 AM
Invited
The sensitivity of gravitational waves searches could be improved by coincident observation of electromagnetic signals from expected gravitational wave sources. One possibility is using low-frequency radio transients to trigger and constrain searches for gravitational wave signals. Both are all-sky observations with a number of common sources, and low frequency observations are able to provide...
John Simonetti
(Virginia Tech)
10/22/11, 9:30 AM
Invited
Given the difficulties in testing current frontier physics ideas in earth-based experiments, we might profitably look to the cosmos for observational tests. I will discuss observations that could set a limit on the size of a warped extra spatial dimension in the braneworld scenario. The observations would be similar to those that provided evidence of gravitational radiation by the binary...
Nahum Arav
(Virginia Tech)
10/22/11, 10:00 AM
Invited
Sub-relativistic outflows are seen as blueshifted absorption troughs in the spectra of roughly one third of all quasars. I will describe how we determine the mass flux and kinetic luminosity of these outflows and show that the derived values suggest that absorption outflows may be a main agent of AGN feedback scenarios.
