Seminar by LSC Spokesperson Patrick Brady, “Gravitational-wave astronomy in the 2020s”

We are very happy to welcome on the EGO/Virgo site in Cascina LIGO Spokesperson Patrick Brady, here pictured with EGO director Stavros Katsanevas and Virgo Spokesperson Giovanni Losurdo. Tomorrow May 12th at 2 PM Prof. Brady will give a public seminar titled “Gravitational-wave astronomy in the 2020s”, which will also be streamed on Zoom.

Patrick Brady will present the current state of ground-based, gravitational-wave astronomy and the prospects for observations over the next decade. He will present highlights from the first three LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) observing runs including limits on gravitational waves from other astrophysical sources. Over the next 5 years, a sequence of upgrades will more than double the amplitude sensitivity of the most sensitive gravitational-wave detectors and increase the rate of compact binary detections by almost an order of magnitude relative to recent runs. Brady will discuss how the improved signal-to-noise ratio will also enable unprecedented measurements of masses, spins, and other properties of black holes and neutron stars in binary systems. The upgrades may also open new discovery spaces for other gravitational-wave sources. The talk will end with a discussion of future directions for upgrading the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA detectors and how this may fit with plans for next-generation facilities such as Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope.

The slides of the presentation are available here: https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-G2200793/public