Speaker
Description
General relativity predicts that a signal passing a massive object will be
deflected by the spacetime curvature induced by that object. This process is
known as gravitational lensing and bears some similarities to e.g. the lensing
of light through glass. Gravitational lensing of light was first observed over
a century ago and was a fundamental test of general relativity. Since then, it
has become commonly observed in images from telescopes. This is also expected
to be observed for gravitaitonal wave data and searches have been conducted in
the LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA data. Thus far, there have been no confident candidates
for detection, however, a recent signal---GW231123---demonstrated some support
for the lensing hypothesis.
This talk will provide a basic introduction to the gravitational lensing of
gravitational waves including the kinds of object that are likely to lens
objects and what signatures these impart on the data that is observed by the
LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA network. It will then detail the various analysis
methodologies that are used to investigate the data for those signatures and
provide some recent results from those analysis efforts.
