Aaron Zimmerman, University of Texas at Austin

University of Arizona, Theoretical Astrophysics Program (TAP) Gravity Initiative Lectureship
TITLE:
Gravitational Waves and Searching for the Unexpected
ABSTRACT:
The detection of gravitational waves has revealed an invisible side of the Universe. Observations of gravitational waves from black holes and neutron stars allow us to test our understanding of dynamical spacetime, study matter at extreme densities, and measure the expansion history of our Universe in new ways. Gravitational wave data also provides opportunities for unexpected discoveries. In this talk I will give an overview of gravitational wave detections made by the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations. I will then discuss two avenues for future discovery with gravitational waves: direct searches for exotic stars, and black hole spectroscopy using ringdown.
BIO:
Aaron Zimmerman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and his research focus is gravitational wave modeling and data analysis. He did his PhD at Caltech with Yanbei Chen, where he studied the ringdown of black holes and methods to visualize curved spacetimes. After graduating in 2013 he moved to the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) in Toronto as a CITA Fellow and then Senior Research Associate. He began at UT Austin in 2018.