Speaker
Description
Ten years after their first direct detection, the catalog of gravitational-wave sources has grown to over 300 candidate events, including all possible combinations of merging black holes and neutron stars. New data from the fourth observing run (O4) of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detectors have revealed events containing black holes at both extremes of the mass distribution, events of likely hierarchical origin, and high-SNR events that allow for increasingly precise tests of general relativity. On the population level, new features and correlations are beginning to reveal the astrophysical processes shaping compact-object binary formation and evolution. In this talk, I will review these findings and the other key astrophysical insights we have gleaned from a decade of gravitational-wave discovery. I will also discuss the prospects for future multimessenger observations based on the new population insights gleaned during O4. I will conclude by highlighting what we can look forward to as we enter the second decade of gravitational-wave astronomy.
