Effective Field Theory for Gravitational Bound States

Speaker: Andreas Ross, Yale University

When: May 4, 2009 (Mon), 12:30PM to 01:30PM (add to my calendar)

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

Abstract:
The effective field theory description yields a systematic treatment of gravitational bound states such as binary systems. Gravitational waves emitted from binaries are one of the prime event candidates at experiments such as LIGO. Due to the multiple scales involved in the binary problem, an effective field theory treatment yields many advantages in perturbative calculations. We will review the setup of the effective field theory and show how to use the this method efficiently to perform precision calculations for gravitational wave phenomenology.