Spring 2010 Seminar Series

Florida Atlantic University Spacetime Physics Group (FAUst)

Seminars this semester will be held weekly on Wednesdays at 12:30 PM in room 435 of the Science and Engineering building on the Boca Raton campus. There will be fourteen talks in total. All are welcome to attend. Details of each talk are given below, but are subject to change at any time prior to the talk.

Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Review of the APS April Meeting 2010 Pedro Marronetti (FAU)
Summary of selected talks and trends from the most recent APS meeting.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Talk cancelled due to conflict with faculty meeting.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
No seminar due to spring break.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Einstein-Aether Gravity. Shawn Wilder (FAU)
I present an abridgment of Ted Jacobson's Einstein-aether gravity: a status report [arXiv:0801.1547v2]. Einstein-aether theory (ae-theory) is a relativistic theory of gravity that assumes a dynamical unit timelike aether permeates spacetime. AE-theory is important because it bears observable consequences while providing a framework to study preferred frame effects (e.g. Lorentz invariance violations and gravitational wave deviations from their classical
counterparts) using formalism developed for the General Theory of Relativity. This presentation aims to be a brief introduction to ae-theory and some of its more noteworthy consequences.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Improvements to Moving Puncture Initial Data and Analysis of Gravitational Waveforms using the BSSN formalism on the BAM code George Reifenberger (FAU)

The search for gravitational wave signatures from binary black hole mergers requires many sub-disciplines of general relativity to contribute to the effort. Numerical relativity has only recently been able to simulate the creation of gravitational wave signatures. These gravitational wave signatures will be used as templates for detection. The need to develop better templates has divided the field into specific areas of code development, one of which involves improvement on the construction of binary black hole initial data. Assuming speeds much smaller than the speed of light, Post-Newtonian approximations are introduced into initial data schemes. Unlike the traditional puncture approach, the resulting initial data have realistic gravitational waves built into them, We evolve these Post-Newtonian initial data forward in time using the BSSN formalism. We find that the resulting waves contain less artificial “junk” radiation than if we start from traditional puncture data.

Wednesday, 31 March 2010
No seminar scheduled.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Title to be announced. Petr Tsatsin (FAU)
Abstract
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
No seminar scheduled.
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
No seminar scheduled.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Title to be announced. Bereket Ghebremichael (FAU)
Abstract