The Dark Energy Survey and Gravitational Waves

The Dark Energy Survey and Gravitational Waves
Marcelle Soares Santos, Brandeis University
Speaker Picture
Date and time: Fri, Oct 26, 2018 - 2:15pm
Location: LGRT 1033
Category: ACFI Seminar
Abstract:

Motivated by the exciting prospect of a new wealth of information arising from the first observations of gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from the same astrophysical phenomena, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) has established a search and discovery program for the optical transients associated with LIGO/Virgo events using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). This talk presents the discovery of the optical transient associated with the neutron star merger GW170817 using DECam and discusses its implications for the emerging field of multi-messenger cosmology with gravitational waves and optical data.