The 35th Midwest Relativity Meeting & Eric Fest

Session

Friday Afternoon Session 1

31 Oct 2025, 14:00

113 (MacKinnon Building)

22. Testing Redshift Distributions in Gravitational-Wave Sources: A New Approach with V/V_max

Chaitanya Khamar (University of Toronto-CITA)

31/10/2025, 14:00

The application of $V/V_{max}$ statistics to gravitational-wave cosmology aids in our understanding of compact object parameter evolution, particularly the redshift and mass distributions of binary systems. Transforming $V/V_{max}$ from a distance-dependent to a population-dependent diagnostic provides a direct pipeline for testing various gravitational-wave source distributions. Through this...

43. Lensing-Induced Biases in Gravitational-Wave Inference and Tests of General Relativity

Ania Liu

31/10/2025, 14:15

As gravitational-wave detectors reveal a growing population of black hole mergers, a hidden source of bias may already be shaping how we interpret them. Gravitational-wave lensing—an inevitable consequence of massive structures in the Universe—can distort signals in ways that mimic precession or apparent deviations from General Relativity. I will present a systematic study of lensing-induced...

38. Modeling Multimessenger White Dwarf Binaries Within The Milky Way

Ryan Beam (Grand Valley State University)

31/10/2025, 14:30

Multi-messenger astronomy is a new and promising area in astrophysics where the same phenomenon is seen using multiple methods. In this project we examine binary systems of dense stellar core remnants known as white dwarfs (WDs) which may be seen both in the electromagnetic spectrum as light and in gravitation as gravitational waves (GWs). Gravitational waves were first predicted by Albert...

40. Using the LISA spacecraft to detect NEO

Brett Bolen

31/10/2025, 14:45

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is scheduled to be launched in 2035 with the primary purpose of detecting gravity waves. This research analyzes LISA potential to detect Near Earth Objects (NEO) as a secondary purpose. This potential was assessed by examining the orbital paths of currently known asteroids to determine the minimal distance between LISA’s path and the NEOs. This...

44. Neural Post-Einsteinian Test of General Relativity with the Third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

Yiqi Xie (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics)

31/10/2025, 15:00

Gravitational waves from compact binaries provide excellent opportunities for testing general relativity (GR) in the strong- and dynamical-field regime. So far, tests using inspiral signals have employed certain variants of the parametrized post-Einsteinian (ppE) framework to model deviations from GR. However, this approach has several limitations: the parameters introduced do not fully...

51. Testing the Inspiral-Merger-Ringdown Test with Boson Stars

Antonia Seifert (Perimeter Institute & University of Waterloo)

31/10/2025, 15:15

As detections of gravitational waves are increasing, they offer a testing ground for General Relativity. One test for deviations from General Relativity and the Standard Model is the inspiral-merger-ringdown test. In this project, we investigate the applicability and reliability of this test based on simulated observations of injected boson star waveforms. We find that the test in its most...

52. Numerical relativity in biscalar-tensor gravity

Chloe Richards

31/10/2025, 15:30

The search for modifications to Einstein’s theory of general relativity has become increasingly intriguing as recent and upcoming gravitational wave experiments open a new window to probe gravity with compact objects such as black holes. One natural extension to general relativity arises from the four-dimensional string-inspired effective field theory of gravity which introduces two scalar...