Speaker
Description
Gravitational-wave astronomy is entering a new regime: as current detectors improve and the next generation of ground-based facilities comes online, detection rates of stellar-mass compact-object mergers will increase from hundreds to millions per year. The observed merger population will comprise systems formed across cosmic time, originating from stars born with different chemical compositions and in a wide range of galactic environments.
I will discuss how this represents both an opportunity and a challenge. On the one hand, gravitational-wave observations provide a powerful new probe of how massive stars form and evolve in environments very different from our own Galaxy. They can also offer complementary constraints on cosmic chemical evolution and star formation beyond the reach of electromagnetic observations. On the other hand, interpreting these populations is highly non-trivial, as different merger formation channels and uncertainties in the evolving cosmic environment can produce degenerate observable signatures.
I will reflect on how the information provided by future detectors can help overcome these challenges and unlock the astrophysical information encoded in gravitational-wave populations.