Astrophysics, Relativity, and Cosmology Seminar - Aditya Vijaykumar (University of Chicago) " Astrophysics insights from the population of compact binaries"

Over the past ten years, gravitational wave astronomy has established itself as a mature field of astronomy. This has been made possible not only by the exponential increase in the number of events, but also increased sophistication of our analysis methods. In this talk, I will describe how our latest measurements of the population of compact binary sources can inform our understanding of binary astrophysics. Thanks to accurately and precisely characterized signal and noise models, it is possible to correct for selection effects and Malmquist bias of gravitational wave detectors. This enables an unbiased inference of the intrinsic population of binaries from the observed population. I will discuss how this population can shed light on the host environments of binaries, with a special focus on the subpopulations of dynamically formed binaries and repeated mergers in dense stellar environments. I will end with some future prospects in this direction, including the measurement (or lack thereof) of eccentricity in compact binaries, as well as Doppler modulation of a signal by virtue of being in an external potential.