LIGO discovery of a Binary Black Hole Merger

Mon, March 14, 2016

I will review the analysis of the first Advanced LIGO observations that launched the era of gravitational-wave astrophysics with the discovery of the GW150914 merger: data search, signal characterization, measurements of source properties. I will discuss how this observation enables the first tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime and what this discovery implies for black-hole astrophysics.