PHY 3101 - Modern Physics - Fall 2018

Cosmology Material

Prof. Imre Bartos guest lecture (Nov. 26, 2018)

• IceCube: The High Energy Universe and Multimessenger Astrophysics with Neutrinos (PDF)
• IceCube picture gallery

Prof. Laura Blecha guest lecture (Dec. 3, 2018)

• Supermassive black holes and gravitational waves (PDF, Powerpoint)
• Movie simulation of black hole merger and emission of GW radiation
• Movie of stars orbiting the central supermassive black hole at the Milky Way center
• Illustris cosmological simulations with images/movies. Also see the successor IllustrisTNG project for more intereting simulations.
• LIGO GW experiment: LIGO made the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015. LIGO is optimized to work in the 50 - 1000 Hz frequency band.
• VIRGO GW experiment: The VIRGO detector is located near Pisa, Italy. It is optimized to work in a GW frequency band similar to LIGO. VIRGO-LIGO coordinate closely and recently jointly announced the detection of four BH-BH mergers.
• LISA space-based GW experiment. LISA is composed of three detectors revolving around the sun in a fixed triangular orientation. It is designed to detect very low frequency (0.1 mHz - 1 Hz) GW signals
• International Pulsar Timing Array: IPTA analyzes pulse-arrival data from a few dozen millisecond pulsars to search for extremely low frequency (10s - 100s μHz) GW signals

Prof. Hirschfeld slides on Cosmology (PDF, Powerpoint)

Experimental tests of Relativity

• Compendium of experimental tests of Special Relativity
• Wikipedia summary of experimental tests of General Relativity. Also check out a 2017 GR experimental summary from an undergraduate thesis.

Other Cosmology/General Relativity links

• 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Articles in NYTimes, phys.org, space.com