Category: News

The 2nd Annual Workshop on Self-Force and Amplitudes will be hosted by the Gravitational Waves Group at the University of Southampton from 9th - 12th September 2025. 

Recent developments in perturbative quantum field theory have offered new insights into the classical two-body dynamics in the post-Minkowskian expansion (i.e., expansion in Newton’s constant), leveraging efficient computational techniques traditionally used for collider physics. At the same time, the gravitational self-force expansion has allowed the gravitational-wave community to develop a description of the two-body dynamics which is fully non-perturbative in the coupling, while being accurate only in the limit of small mass ratios.

There are exciting prospects in uniting these two complementary approaches, possibly yielding powerful new modeling methods for gravitational-wave astronomy and new insights into the connections between gravity and quantum field theory. There have recently been notable steps toward this goal, but much more remains to be done to fully benefit from synergies between the two methods. This workshop is a sequel to the event held at the Higgs Centre in Edinburgh in 2024, which brought together experts from both communities to establish new collaborations.

Topics will include

using data from scattering scenarios to inform models of gravitationally bound systems
using the self-force expansion to determine unknown high-order terms in the post-Minkowskian series, and vice versa
using self-force results to inform resummations of post-Minkowskian calculations, and vice versa
validating and informing resummation techniques using numerical relativity simulations of scattering orbits
describing Kerr black holes with amplitudes and point particles
investigating double copy structures in classical gravity and black hole perturbation theory

Due to limited space, registration will be moderated.

Invited speakers

Leor Barack
Poul Daamgard
Thibault Damour
Gustav Jakobsen
Dimitrios Kosmopoulos
Oliver Long
Julio Parra-Martinez
Nabha Shah
Canxin Shi
Davide Usseglio
Maarten van de Meent
Pierre Vanhove
Chris Whittall
Mao Zeng
more to come…

Workshop Website

The workshop APCTP-GW2025 aims to bring together researchers from the Asia Pacific region who are working on various aspects of the rapidly advancing field of GW astronomy. Set in the beautiful backdrop of Taipei in the spring, participants will not only engage in discussions but also enjoy the excellent weather, vibrant culture, and authentic traditional cuisine.

Gravitational waves (GWs) are transforming our understanding of the Universe, offering a revolutionary window into cosmic phenomena that were previously inaccessible through traditional astronomical observations. The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA consortium’s observations of hundreds of transient GW events from merging stellar mass black holes and neutron stars during the last decade have inaugurated the era of GW Astronomy by deepening our knowledge of these extreme stars of Einstein’s General Relativity. Rapidly maturing Pulsar Timing Array efforts have provided glimpses of nanohertz GWs, offering new insights into high-energy phenomena in the early Universe and supermassive black hole binaries. The upcoming/proposed GW observatories like SKA, LIGO-India, LISA, Taiji/TianQin, ET, CE, and LILA are expected to address some of the most pressing challenges in modern cosmology, such as the Hubble tension and the nature of inflation in the early Universe while providing ultra-sensitive tests for Einstein’s universe.

Invited Speakers

Alvin Chua (NUS)
Anna Heffernan (UIB)*
Che-Yu Chen (RIKEN)
Feng-Li Lin (NTNU)
George Hobbs (CSIRO)
Jai-chan Hwang (IBS)
Otto Hannuksela (CUHK)
Ryan Shannon (Swinburne)
Sarah Vigeland (UWM)
Takahiro Tanaka (Kyoto U.)
Tjonnie Li (KU Leuven)
Vicharit Yingcharoenrat (Chulalongkorn U.)
Xiao Xue (IFAE)
Xingjiang Zhu (BNU)
Yuki Inoue (NCU)
More To Be Confirmed*

Dates and Venue

20 – 25 April, 2025
Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Registration deadline: 1st March 2025
No registration fee, but slots are limited
Contributed talks and posters are welcome

Code of Conduct

The organizers are committed to ensuring that this workshop is a positive, inclusive, and enriching experience for all participants. We aim to foster an environment free from harassment and discrimination, welcoming individuals of all genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, physical appearances, body sizes, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and ages. Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated. Thank you for helping us create a supportive and collaborative community.

Scientific Organising Committee

Achamveedu Gopakumar (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)
Ian Vega (National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines Diliman)
Kin-Wang Ng (Academia Sinica)
Reginald Christian Bernardo (APCTP)
Stephen Appleby (APCTP)

Workshop Website

The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts working in diverse fields of observational cosmology to address pressing questions that the new observations are currently bringing such as:

• How can we distinguish cosmological sources from the detected Pulsar Timing Array signal?
• What is the nature of the Hubble tension: systematic errors or a sign for new physics?
• How will gravitational waves standard sirens contribute in the near future?
• How to distinguish the primordial gravitational wave background from the astrophysical background?
• Which notable multi-messenger signatures should be searched for ?

Invited Speakers

James Alvey (Cambridge U., UK)
Dillon Brout (Boston U., USA)
François Foucart (U. New Hampshire, USA)
Gabriele Franciolini (CERN, Switzerland)
Wendy Freedman (Chicago U., USA)
Archisman Ghosh (Ghent U., Belgium)
Rachel Gray (Glasgow U., Scotland)
Stefan Hild (Maastricht U., The Netherlands)
Tanja Hinderer (Utrecht U., The Netherlands)
Justin Janquart (UCLouvain, Belgium)
Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech, USA)
Julien Lesgourgues (RWTH U., Germany)
Chiara Mingarelli (Yale U., USA)
Andrea Mitridate (DESY, Germany)
Antonella Palmese (Carnegie Mellon U., USA )
Adam Riess (Johns Hopkins U., USA)
Mairi Sakellariadou (Kings’s College London, UK)

Scientific and Organising Committee

Giacomo Bruno (UCLouvain, Belgium)
Sébastien Clesse (ULB, Brussels, Belgium)
Geoffrey Compère (ULB, Brussels, Belgium)
Archisman Ghosh (Ghent U., Belgium)
Alberto Marrioti (VUB, Brussels, Belgium)
Samaya Nissanke (UvA, The Netherlands)
Nick Van Remortel (Antwerp U., Belgium)
Alex Sevrin (VUB, Brussels, Belgium)

Practical information for attendees
Registration

Attendance is free of charge but registration is required (limited space).

To register, please click on ‘Click HERE to register’ at the top right of the webpage. After registering you should receive an automatic response confirming that your registration has been submitted. This message is then followed by an email confirming your participation. If you experience any technical issues during registration, please contact Isabelle Van Geet (isabelle.vangeet(at)solvayinstitutes.be)

Workshop Website

When compact objects such as neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes venture into the vicinity of giant black holes, they can form highly asymmetric and strongly relativistic binary systems known as extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). EMRIs are some of the most promising gravitational-wave sources that the upcoming space mission LISA might observe, but also some of the most difficult to model, detect and characterise.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts in EMRI science and LISA data analysis, to assess the state of the art in the field and to further develop plans for the optimal extraction of science from such sources. The workshop will focus mainly on data analysis techniques for EMRI search and inference in the broader context of the LISA global fit, but will naturally extend to adjacent topics such as the construction of accurate and efficient waveform templates, and the impact of astrophysical environments on EMRI modelling and interpretation.

Workshop Website

We are excited to announce that our 2025 summer Aspen workshop proposal for "Physics in the Era of Nanohertz Gravitational Waves" has been accepted and applications are now open.
The program is scheduled for August 3-24, 2025.  The application deadline is January 31, 2025; see https://aspenphys.org/summer-workshops/. We invite you to apply. Please also encourage other people who are active in the field to apply.

Be aware that we cannot guarantee admission to the workshop. Admission to the workshop is granted not by the workshop organizers, but by the Admissions Committee of the Center. Because of the constraints imposed by the rest of the Aspen Center for Physics program, they are usually not able to admit everyone who applies.

Aspen Center for Physics encourages participants, especially those early in their careers, those with families, and those from underrepresented groups, institutions, and countries, to apply for our summer program. The Center has a limited amount of additional financial support for participants who fall into these, and other, special categories and encourages applicants who need financial support to apply for it on their application.

Workshop Website

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a joint effort of ESA and NASA to develop and operate the first space-based observatory of gravitational waves (GWs) in the millihertz frequency band. To prepare for LISA observations and its unique data products, we are organizing the 3rd LISA Sprint in Huntsville, AL, from Monday April 28 to Wednesday April 30, 2025.

The meeting’s goals are two-fold:

• Connect LISA data scientists with astronomers and astrophysicists who will incorporate LISA data products into their research.
• Advance the research community’s readiness to capitalize on LISA observations.

Workshop Theme

The theme for this third meeting is Time Domain and Multimessenger Astronomy with LISA. During the workshop, small interdisciplinary teams of researchers will come together to make concrete progress on concise projects and goals related to this scientific area.

Participants are encouraged to propose ideas and contribute material that aligns with the workshop’s format. This is a hands-on workshop with no traditional talks—only brief project pitches and a final “show and tell” to share progress with the group.
Apply for the Meeting

Logistics

Information for planning your trip will be available soon. Stay tuned for more details on travel, accommodation, and venue information.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is ideal for researchers, astronomers, astrophysicists, and data scientists who wish to engage with LISA’s data and contribute to the future of gravitational wave astronomy.

Meeting Website