IAS-PHYS Fundamental Physics Seminar Series - Gravitational Waves: the Theorist’s Swiss Knife
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Abstract
Gravitational waves provide a novel and powerful way to test astrophysical models of compact objects, early universe processes, beyond the Standard Model particle physics, dark matter candidates, Einstein's theory of General Relativity and extended gravity models, and even quantum gravity candidate theories. A short introduction to the gravitational-wave background and the method the speaker’s team is using to detect it will be presented. Constraints on various astrophysical / cosmological models from the non-detectability of the gravitational-wave background will be discussed. Gravitational waves from transients will be highlighted and their physical implications will be summarized.
About the Speaker
Prof. Mairi SAKELLARIADOU is a theoretical physicist, Professor at King's College London. Her field of research is theoretical physics and cosmology, with emphasis on the physics of the early universe. Most of the fundamental questions in cosmology - which for a long time belonged to the realm of philosophy - can now be addressed within a physical theory and tested against increasingly accurate observational data. We live the golden age of cosmology. Still, fundamental puzzles remain. The most obvious is what, if anything, happened before the Big Bang? Another is what is the Universe made of? Cosmology is a multidisciplinary discipline which combines theoretical physics, gravitational physics, astrophysics, and particle physics, as well as mathematics. It requires a blend of theoretical developments and astrophysical and particle physics data. Her current research follows two main directions: (I) use gravitational waves to probe the Universe and test fundamental theories, (II) use quantum gravity proposals to build cosmological models and in return use current observational and experimental data to test the validity of such proposals. She has co-authored more than 430 papers — 220 are short-authors papers — with more than 110,000 citations and h-index of 115, spanning research on gravitational waves, topological defects, quantum gravity / quantum cosmology, brane / string cosmology, noncommutative geometry, dark matter, modified gravity.
Prof. Sakellariadou is member of several international collaborations, namely: LIGO Scientific Collaboration, GEO 600, LISA consortium, Einstein Telescope Observational Science Board, MoEDAL experiment, European Pulsar Timing Array and Square Kilometer Array Telescope project. She is co-chair of the stochastic group of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration and until recently she was co-chair of the Cosmology Division of the Einstein Telescope Observation Science Board.
She is founding committee member of the International Society for Quantum Gravity (ISQG), and member of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). She is Editor-in-Chief of the international journal General Relativity and Gravitation (Springer), and she was Elected President of the European Physical Society (2024-2026).
About the Center for Fundamental Physics
For more information, please refer to https://iascfp.hkust.edu.hk/.
For Attendees' Attention
Seating is on a first come, first served basis.