Detections of gravitational waves (GW) by aLIGO and Virgo have opened a new era of the gravitational wave astronomy and astrophysics. Those detected GW events, mergers of ten binary black holes and one double neutron star, have been reshaping our understanding of the evolution of massive stars, formation and evolution of black holes and neutron stars. They have also been used as unprecedented tools to probe the equation of state of nuclear matter in neutron stars, test general relativity in extremely strong field regime, and probe cosmology. The detection of the electromagnetic counterpart of the double neutron star merger (GW170817) has provided important insights into short gamma ray bursts and kilonovae, and the physics behind these phenomena, and marked the advent of the multi-messenger astrophysics. With the upcoming observations of aLIGO and Virgo, many more binary black hole mergers and double neutron star mergers (and possibly neutron star--black hole mergers) will be detected, which will further deepen our understandings on those various aspects.
This conference is the fourth of the annual conference series on "Gravitational Wave Astrophysics", supported mainly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences through the Strategy Priority Program "Multi-wavelength Gravitational Wave Universe", NFSC and Key Laboratory for the Structure and Evolution of Celestial Objects, CAS. This conference is also partly supported by Innovation Group of NSFC, namely "Galaxies and Quasars" at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), the High-Energy Time-Domain Astrophysics Group at Purple Mountain Observatory, CAS, Academician Workstation for Galaxies and Cosmology in USTC, and Center for Antarctic Astronomical Research in USTC. The aim of the conference is to bring interested physicists and astronomers, mostly in China, together to learn about the status and new results of the global GW detection, to discuss the new discoveries and developments in gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics, to stimulate collaborations among physicists and astronomers, theoreticians and observers, Chinese and oversea scientists, as well as to provide a forum to discuss future developments of the GW related researches in China and their integration into the international community.
This conference is the fourth of the annual conference series on "Gravitational Wave Astrophysics", supported mainly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences through the Strategy Priority Program "Multi-wavelength Gravitational Wave Universe", NFSC and Key Laboratory for the Structure and Evolution of Celestial Objects, CAS. This conference is also partly supported by Innovation Group of NSFC, namely "Galaxies and Quasars" at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), the High-Energy Time-Domain Astrophysics Group at Purple Mountain Observatory, CAS, Academician Workstation for Galaxies and Cosmology in USTC, and Center for Antarctic Astronomical Research in USTC. The aim of the conference is to bring interested physicists and astronomers, mostly in China, together to learn about the status and new results of the global GW detection, to discuss the new discoveries and developments in gravitational wave and multi-messenger astrophysics, to stimulate collaborations among physicists and astronomers, theoreticians and observers, Chinese and oversea scientists, as well as to provide a forum to discuss future developments of the GW related researches in China and their integration into the international community.