Speaker
Description
In the quest to explore the distant Universe, gravity’s universal nature provides crucial aid, as any clump of matter may act as a giant lens to magnify the radiation emitted by otherwise too-faint objects. Thanks to the gravitational lensing of electromagnetic waves, we have mapped the elusive dark matter, found the furthest galaxies, and even discovered exoplanets.
Gravitational waves are the next frontier in gravitational lensing. Because of their well-understood waveforms and large wavelengths, they hold unique discovery potential to test gravity in the uncharted wave-optics regime, probe the dark matter substructure and find new populations of black holes in the early Universe. Gravitational lensing is also essential for precision standard siren cosmology. In this talk, after introducing the basics of gravitational-wave lensing, I will discuss the relevance of lensing for LISA and its unique characteristics.