Tyson Littenberg (ST12) organized and convened a Special Session at the June American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting on behalf of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration titled “Science from the LIGO-Virgo Catalog of Gravitational Wave Events.” The special session—which sits at the boundary between observing campaigns and at the threshold of yet another leap forward in the detector network capabilities—summarized the current state of our understanding of the gravitational wave source catalogs and previewed the near-term future of ground-based gravitational wave observations.
The session featured a diverse panel of four early career scientists at the forefront of gravitational wave astronomy: Chase Kimball (Northwestern University) presented the exceptional events from the first half of the 3rd observing run (O3a), Zoheyr Doctor (University of Oregon) summarized what has been inferred about the astrophysical population of black hole and neutron star mergers, Katerina Martinovic (King’s College London) gave a status update on searches for stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds, and Ansel Neunzert (University of Washington, Bothell) presented current upper limits on Neutron Star properties set by searches for continuous gravitational wave sources. The speakers then participated in a panel discussion about the work leading up to, and expected scientific return from, the O4 observing run slated to begin in summer 2022.
