Physics - Astrophysics, Relativity, and Cosmology Seminar

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Astrophysics, Gravitation and Cosmology Seminar - "Scalar fields and compact objects"

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Location
464 Loomis Lab
Date
Nov 6, 2019   12:00 pm  
Speaker
Hector O. Silva, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact
Betsy Greifenkamp
E-Mail
greifenk@illinois.edu
Views
42

General Relativity remains to this day our best description of gravitational phenomena in Nature. The theory has shown remarkable consistency with observations in situations ranging from the slow-velocities, weak-gravitational fields regime in the confines of our Solar System, to the highly nonlinear, dynamical regime of binary black holes mergers. Despite its tremendous successes, issues such as its quantization and the cosmological constant problem suggest Einstein’s theory might not be the final theory of the gravitational interaction. Motivated by these questions, theorists have proposed a myriad of extension to General Relativity over the decades. In this talk, I will focus on theories with additional scalar degrees of freedom. In particular, I will describe some theories which pass Solar System tests and yet yield interesting new phenomenology in strong-gravity systems involving compact objects, i.e. neutron stars and black holes.

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