Cosmology in the era of multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves - ONLINE

Motivated by the exciting prospect of new wealth of information arising from the first observations of gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from the same astrophysical phenomena, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has established a search and discovery program for the optical transients associated with LIGO/Virgo events (DESGW). Using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), DESGW has contributed to the discovery of the optical transient associated with the neutron star merger GW170817, and produced the first cosmological measurements using gravitational wave events as standard sirens. We now pursue new results from the third observing campaign, which ended just last month. In this talk, I present an overview of our results, and discuss its implications for the emerging field of multi-messenger cosmology with gravitational waves and optical survey data.

Speaker:  Marcelle Soares-Santos, Brandeis