Ilias Cholis (Johns Hopkins & FNAL) will tell us about the detection of gravitational waves by LIGO.

Title: Observing gravitational waves with LIGO

Abstact: Recently Advanced LIGO has detected an event of Binary Black Hole coalescence. I will discuss those generic recent results and LIGOs future capacities in detecting gravitational waves. I will also consider the possibility that the black-hole binary detected may have something to do with dark matter. There remains a window for masses ~10 $M_{\odot}$ and 100 $M_{\odot}$ where primordial black holes may constitute the dark matter. If two black holes in a galactic halo pass sufficiently close, they can radiate enough energy in gravitational waves to become gravitationally bound. The bound black holes will then rapidly spiral inward due to emission of gravitational radiation and ultimately merge. Within reasonable estimates, gravitational waves from primordial black holes span a range that overlaps the 2 − 53 Gpc^−3 yr^−1 rate estimated from the event observed at LIGO, thus raising the possibility that LIGO may have detected PBH dark matter.

Ilias’ slides can be found here.