This school is part of the annual ICTS summer schools on gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy. Recent observations of GW signals from coalescing binaries of black holes and neutron stars have firmly established the field of GW astronomy. The promise of GW astronomy to address foundational questions in physics and astrophysics has been widely recognized. Physicists and astrophysicists are now coming up with novel ways of using GW observations to understand a variety of questions in fundamental physics and astrophysics. Recognizing this, the school has started to include courses which are considered to be outside to the traditional scope of GW physics. This year’s school will involve four graduate-level courses:
- Exotic compact objects and their gravitational-wave signatures (Andrea Maselli, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon)
- Physics and astrophysics of electromagnetic counterparts of binary mergers (Kenta Hotokezaka, Princeton University)
- Dynamic formation of compact binaries in dense stellar clusters (Sourav Chatterjee, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)
- Gravitational lensing of electromagnetic and gravitational waves (Tejaswi Venumadhav Nerella, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
The school is primarily meant for graduate students and postdocs in gravitational-wave physics, astrophysics and related fields. A small number of highly motivated senior undergraduates can also be considered.