Peter Shawhan
Department of Physics, University of Maryland
LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Findings So Far, and Current Events
The first two observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors, in 2015-2017, yielded 11 confidently-detected gravitational-wave events. Careful analysis of these events has provided insights about short gamma-ray bursts, enabled tests of general relativity, measured the Hubble Constant, and given a picture of the population of compact binary systems. I will summarize several of the published findings from that event sample and then go on to describe the event candidates detected so far in the O3 observing run, which is now at its halfway point. With 33 candidate events identified in O3 data and shared with the astronomical community so far, the O3 run promises to significantly improving our understanding of the population of merging compact binaries and the tests we can perform.