Quasinormal Modes and Black Hole Ringdown

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Chris Moore (University of Birmingham, Gravitational Wave Astronomy)
• Thursday 28 April 2022, 13:15-14:30
• Theory Library.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Hannah Price.

Binary black holes are by far the most numerous sources of gravitational waves. Their signals are usually short and loud; the final stages of the merger and the ringdown can be clearly seen “by eye” in a few cases. The ringdown is the final few decaying wave oscillations and is associated with the system settling down into its final, stationary state (generally assumed to be a Kerr black hole). The ringdown signal contains a superposition of exponentially damped oscillations, called quasinormal modes (QNMs). The study of QNMS offers a deep insight in the structure of the spacetime metric just outside of the event horizon. In this talk I will review the physics of QNMs and describe recent observation developments aimed at extracting multiple QNMs from the gravitational wave detections made by LIGO /Virgo. This allows the final, remnant black holes to be studied in unprecedented detail and for tests of general relativity and the “no hair” theorem to be performed.

This talk is part of the Theoretical Physics Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Bham Talks
• Theoretical Physics Seminars
• Theory Library
• What's on in Physics?

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.