Theory HEP Seminar

Black Hole Archaeology

Jeremy Sakstein

University of Hawaii

Gravitational wave observations of merging binary black holes have enabled us to probe their population statistics for the first time. In this talk, I will describe how this information can be used to probe competing theories of dark matter and dark energy via their effects on the black hole's progenitors — massive stars. The effects of new physics upon massive stars can alter their structure and evolution, leading to differences in the shape of the black hole mass function, and location of features such as the black hole mass gap.