Physics Seminar
Date: Friday, 7 March 2025
Time: 11:30 AM
Venue: Lecture Hall 2
Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves
Apratim Ganguly
IUCAA, Pune.
07-03-25

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Abstract

Observation of lensed gravitational wave signals can open a new window to study astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics. The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has been actively searching for such distortions amongst the observed signals, with recent analyses providing stricter constraints but no confident detections.

In this talk, I will discuss the latest results focussing on three major directions: challenges associated in detection and characterization of type-II lensed binary black hole signals, how (non-)detection of microlensed signals can be used to place constraints on the fraction of compact dark matter candidates and the potential for microlensed signals to falsely bias the tests of general relativity. Hopefully, these studies will highlight the growing importance of understanding the systematics that lensed GW signals introduce and the opportunities they provide in exploring new physics.