Physics (Internal)

Gravitational waves and compact dark matter

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

LIGO’s discovery of the merger of two 30-solar-mass black holes led my colleagues and I to consider the possibility that such black holes may make up the dark matter. The coincidence between the rate that such black holes would merge, if they were the dark matter, and the merger rate inferred from LIGO is intriguing. I will discuss these arguments, the astrophysical constraints to the scenario, possible steps forward, and some interesting new astrophysics that this work has taken us into.