Colloquium – Nicolas Yunes

Nicolas Yunes, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Uncovering extreme matter when gravity waves

The recent gravitational wave observations of the collision of neutron stars have given us a glimpse into a realm where gravity and matter are both strongly-interacting and wildly dynamical. These waves carry a wealth of information about the universe, potentially revealing insights into nuclear physics at extreme densities and low temperatures. In this colloquium, I will explore how gravitational wave data can shed light on the physics of neutron stars, including their matter content and interactions under extreme conditions.

Bio: Professor Nicolas Yunes embarked on his scholarly journey in Argentina and then migrated North shortly thereafter, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in Saint Louis in 2003 and a Physics Ph.D. at The Pennsylvania State University in 2008. Following his tenure as a Research Associate at Princeton University and a distinguished Einstein Fellowship at MIT and Harvard, he joined the faculty of Montana State University, where he was a Professor from 2011 to 2019. In 2019, he accepted a position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he now holds court as the founding director of the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe. Professor Yunes has received many accolades, including the General Relativity and Gravitation Young Scientist Prize by the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation in 2015, and he was elected APS Fellow in 2023. He is also deeply involved in education and outreach, writing a graduate textbook on gravitational waves (“Gravitational Waves in Physics and Astrophysics: An Artisan’s Guide”) and a popular book on tests of general relativity(“Is Einstein Still Right?”), and creating an international Science Festival (“Celebrating Einstein”), an original planetarium show (“Einstein’s Gravity Playlist”), and an interdisciplinary spoken word show (“Rhythms of the Universe”).

Professor Yunes is a skilled practitioner of theoretical physics, his expertise entwining the grand tapestry of general relativity and gravitation. He is known across various realms of gravitational physics, particularly for his deep work on testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity through the spectral whispers of gravitational waves produced in the last dance of black holes and neutron stars. He is the creator of the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework, a sharp tool to scrutinize Einstein’s theory through the lens of gravitational waves in a manner untethered by specific models. Professor Yunes is also known for his explorations of universal relations between observable properties of neutron stars and their use to learn new physics from the gravitational waves they emit when they collide. He has unearthed the I-Love-Q and the binary Love relations, as well as the effect of out-of-equilibrium phenomena in the late inspiral of neutron stars, powerful weapons now wielded by many to decipher the nature of matter at its most extreme confines, when gravity waves.

Sept 5, 2024 @ 4:10pm Central in Stevenson Center 5326; light refreshments available at 3:50pm in Stevenson Center 5326

Host: A Lupsasca