Reinterpreting Low Frequency LIGO/Virgo Events as Gravitationally-Lensed Magnified Stellar-Mass Black Hole Mergers at Cosmological Distances

Professor George Smoot (Université Paris Diderot, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Nazarbayev University, University of California) will give a colloquium entitled “Reinterpreting Low Frequency LIGO/Virgo Events as Gravitationally-Lensed Magnified Stellar-Mass Black Hole Mergers at Cosmological Distances” (abstract below), in Amphitheater Pierre Gilles de Gennes at 11am on Friday, July 6.

 

 

Title: Reinterpreting Low Frequency LIGO/Virgo Events as Gravitationally-Lensed Magnified Stellar-Mass Black Hole Mergers at Cosmological Distances 
Abstract: I will be presenting a model that indicates that the apparent high-mass binary black hole mergers observed by LIGO/Virgo are actually lower mass black holes at higher redshift that have been highly magnified by gravitational lensing. In principle about half of the early events observed by LIGO/Virgo will be highly magnified by gravitational lensing and come from the range 0.5 < z < 2 rather than the z ~0.1 that they have been interpreted without taking lensing into account.