November 28 - 30, 2011
Perimeter Institute
Scientific Areas: Cosmology and Gravitation

This small three day workshop will focus on the applications of effective field theories to gravitational physics, with particular emphasis on gravitational wave production. These effective theories have been used to derive new results for calculating gravitational potentials and multipole moments for binary systems at third order in the post-Newtonian approximation, as well as thermodynamic properties of Kaluza-Klein black holes. It has also been recently utilized to calculate corrections to leading order radiation reaction forces in general relativity as well as classical electrodynamics. The power of the methodology is that it allows on to calculate systematically to arbitrarily high accuracy. Such higher order results will be used in generating gravitational wave templates to extract parameters such as masses and spins of binary constituents at LIGO and LISA. The purpose of the workshop will be to gather experts in the field to generate new applications (e.g., in cosmology) as well as to push present applications to higher orders.

Scientific Organizers:
Walter Goldberger, Yale University
Robert Myers, Perimeter Institute
Ira Rothstein, Carnegie Mellon University
Misha Smolkin, Perimeter Institute