Workshop: "Compact Objects as Astrophysical and Gravitational Probes" at the Lorentz Center (Feb 2-6, 2015)

It's a pleasure to advertise the workshop  "Compact Objects as Astrophysical and Gravitational Probes", to be held at the Lorentz Center (Leiden, The Netherlands) from February 2 through February 6.

One version of the workshop's poster, the official one will soon appear in the official webpage.
Here young Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Albert Einstein are looking towards the most urgent questions in relativistic astrophysics, a field that has essentially emerged from their seminal works. The two young guys respectively symbolize the astrophysical and the general-relativistic communities that will gather together at this workshop, to share expertize and try to fill the gap between them.

Last June, Enrico Barausse (at the Institut Astrophysique de Paris), Tamara Bogdanovic (at Georgia Tech in Atlanta), Vitor Cardoso (at CENTRA - Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon) and Elena Maria Rossi (at Leiden University in the Netherlands) and myself have applied to an international call at the Lorentz Center to organize a workshop. We initially had in mind a small-size workshop with ~20 participants, but the proposal was selected for a large-size event. Thus, in less than one month, more than 50 world-leading experts in relativistic astrophysics will gather together in what will hopefully be a fruitful and exciting meeting (here is the program and at list of participants).




Indeed, the aim of the workshop is to bring together the astrophysical communities working on black holes and neutron stars with the communities working on gravitational-wave detection of these objects and tests of gravity. The workshop is organized around the following themes: (i) The role of the black hole spin, (ii) Physics of jets and outflows, (iii) Properties of compact objects and tests of gravity (here is a more detailed description).


Lorentz Center is an institute devoted to workshop organization in various fields. Indeed, a very positive aspect of these workshops is that, after the proposal is selected by an international committee, the Center takes care of the most relevant issues related to the organization, so that the organizers can focus completely on the scientific aspects of the meeting.

As a part of the Lorentz Center facilities, each participant will have her/his own office space and ample time is allocated for informal discussions. In addition, each daily session will end with a more structured discussion guided by a moderator, with the aim to stimulate an interactive atmosphere and encourage collaborations and brainstorming between participants.