NBIA Gravity Seminar: Aditya Vijaykumar

Speaker: Aditya Vijaykumar

Title: Probing the host environments of compact binaries

Abstract: When, where, and how compact binaries form is still a mystery, and observations from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detectors are starting to shed light on this. In this talk, I will discuss ways of probing host environments of these binaries. First, I will show how the redshift evolution of the binary black hole merger rate can be used to constrain the parameter space of the host galaxies of such mergers. Then, I will discuss how a nonzero centre of mass acceleration affects the observed signal in our detectors, and how one can differentiate between candidate host environments by measurements of acceleration. I will end with some prospects along these lines for the future.