Gravitational-wave SNOWBALLS,
Populations, and models
Sexten (Italy) - Jan 20th-24th, 2025

Gravitational waves represent an incredibly exciting new frontier in observational astronomy.  The rapidly growing data set of mergers of black holes and neutron stars contains information on the compact-object masses, spins, and merger redshifts.  The population of these sources has the potential to inform our understanding of fields as broad as stellar and binary evolution, mass-transfer physics, dynamics in dense stellar environments, supernova modeling, nucleosynthesis, chemical evolution, the cosmological history of the Universe, as well as the fundamental theory of gravity.  Yet, these discoveries rely on inference using data with limited precision and significant selection effects, using potentially imperfect models that may lead to incorrect conclusions.


This workshop brings together researchers at the forefront of both forward astrophysical modeling of compact object binary formation and gravitational-wave data analysis in preparation for the upcoming O4 data release of the  LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA interferometers.


The workshop is organized by Davide Gerosa, Ilya Mandel, and Salvatore Vitale at the Sexten Center for Astrophysics, which is located in the beautiful Dolomites, in the Italian Alps. Sexten overlooks the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (Three Peaks of Lavaredo) which are among the most iconic peaks in alpinism history. Scientific sessions are hosted at the Bad Moos hotel, which is right next to the ski slopes. Please don't throw too many snowballs at other conference attendees. 

Artwork: "Hold the Moon" by Josephine A. Geiger.

Title: From the dictionary: "to snowball = to increase, accumulate, expand, or multiply at a rapidly accelerating rate."  Much like the GW catalog in the next few years!