Long Programs

Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)

The field of Relativistic Astrophysics has recently witnessed a major revolution with the historical Nobel-Prize-winning observation of Gravitational Waves (GWs) from a binary black hole merger and the first GW observation of the merger of two neutron stars. The latter was followed by electromagnetic detections from the ground and space triggering an unprecedented multi-instrument observational campaign. These detections have led to the beginning of GW astronomy and the era of multi-messenger astrophysics.

The scientific impact of the existing GW observations in fundamental physics, astronomy, astrophysics, nuclear physics, and cosmology is already extraordinary. In the next few years, with the significant increase of available GW data driven by the continuous upgrades of current detectors and by the incorporation of additional GW facilities to the global network, this impact will multiply. Processing and interpreting the anticipated huge number of forthcoming GW detections will pose a significant challenge and will require close interaction between mathematical modelers, waveform developers, numerical relativists, data analysts and theoretical and observational astrophysicists.

On the one hand, progress in multi-messenger astrophysics is driven by observations with increasingly more sensitive telescopes, high-energy neutrino detectors, and GW detectors on Earth and in space. On the other hand, another major element of advance is provided by the theoretical studies of Einstein’s General Relativity equations to explain those observations. Modern theoretical astrophysics relies on mathematical properties of the initial conditions for the evolution of the General Relativity equations and numerical simulations to improve the understanding of the dynamics of astrophysical systems.

The aim of this program is to connect efforts of the mathematical and physical sciences communities to address the latest advances and new challenges on the understanding of multi-messenger astronomy. The IPAM program will comprise four workshops, each addressing a different topic: the generation of catalogs of waveform templates; the discussion of the mathematical modeling of the equations governing strong relativistic systems; parameter estimation of astrophysical sources of gravitational waves; and the state of the art of big data and deep learning techniques for GW data analysis.

Program Flyer PDF

Organizing Committee

Manuela Campanelli (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Marco Cavaglia (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
Jose Antonio Font (University of Valencia)
Igor Rodnianski (Princeton University)
Susana Serna (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Gunther Uhlmann (University of Washington)