Enrico Herrmann

"Black Hole Collider Physics"

Abstract: In 2015, for the first time, the LIGO collaboration directly detected gravitational waves emitted by a binary Black Hole system. This discovery opened a completely new window onto our Universe and constitutes the beginning of gravitational wave astronomy with discovery potential ranging from precision tests of General Relativity (GR) to advances in fundamental physics. In light of the increasing amount of data accumulated by a rapidly expanding network of gravitational wave detectors, a precise theoretical understanding of the expected gravitational waveforms is crucial in order to maximize the experimental capabilities. Numerous symbiotic methods have been developed over the years in order to tackle the gravitational two-body problem, ranging from numerical relativity to approximate analytic methods. In my talk, I will point out several ways how tools originally developed for particle collider physics have recently led to new state-of-the-art analytic results in classical gravity. The key players will be scattering amplitudes---fundamental objects in Quantum Field Theory (QFT)---from which we can extract classical quantities of interest in GR. Although familiar from introductory courses to QFT, scattering amplitudes developed into an independent field of study that brought to light numerous marvelous structures that help streamline gravitational perturbation theory.