Thibault Damour
Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, France
Date
27 February 2013
Host
Gian Michele Graf
Title
Gravitational Waves from Coalescing Binary Black Holes
Abstract
A network of ground-based interferometric gravitational wave detectors (LIGO/VIRGO…) is currently being upgraded, and should, in a few years, reach a sensitivity enabling them to detect the gravitational waves emitted by coalescing compact binaries: i.e. binary systems made of black holes and/or neutron stars. This prospect has motivated renewed theoretical studies of the motion and radiation of relativistic two-body systems. I will review the recent analytical studies of (comparable-mass) two-body systems, and their comparison to numerical relativity results. Particular attention will be given to the recently developed “Effective One Body” approach to the motion and radiation of binary systems.