Speaker
Dr
Monos Naidoo
(Rhodes University)
Description
Calculations of gravitational waves (GWs), both analytical and numerical, assume that they propagate from source to a detector on Earth in a vacuum spacetime. Whilst the average cosmological density of baryonic plus dark matter is small, a detected GW event may be a considerable distance away from its source, up to order 1 Gpc, and the quantity of intervening matter may not be negligible. Furthermore, there is the possiblity that the astrophysical environment of a source event may be such that the source is surrounded by a substantial amount of matter. As we enter into an era of precision GW measurements, it is important to quantify any effects due to the propagation of GWs through a non-vacuum spacetime
Primary authors
Dr
Monos Naidoo
(Rhodes University)
Prof.
Nigel Bishop
(Rhodes University)
Dr
Petrus Van der Walt
(Rhodes University)
