Paul Lasky

Professor, Head of Astronomy and Astrophysics
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University

Welcome to Paul Lasky's home on the web

I am a Professor and Head of the Monash Astrophysics group, at Monash University in Australia. I am interested in a number of topics under the broad heading of gravitational astrophysics, although I have a particular penchant for gravitational wave astrophysics. I am a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA), which are two complementary experiments at the forefront of gravitational-wave research. I am also the Chair of the Executive Committee for the Australian Gravitational-Wave Observatory Project that is charged with driving forward the development of an Australian gravitational-wave observatory.

News

Dec 10, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Tong, Guttman, Clarke, Lasky et al. Transdimensional inference for gravitational-wave astronomy with Bilby. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Dec 10-13, 2024: I'm at the amazing OzGrav retreat this week in beautiful Brisbane. Discussing all things science and strategy for this exciting new Centre of Excellence.
Dec 7, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: You, Zhu et al. The birth mass function of neutron stars. Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy: Check it out on the arXiv
Dec 2, 2024: Huge congratulations to Kendall Jenner who has just completed her Master of Philosophy from The University of Adelaide, with a thesis titled: 'Convolutional Neural Network for Analysing GRavitational Wave Signals'. I co-supervised Kendall with Prof. David Ottaway and Dr Lingqiao Liu.
Nov. 26, 2024: New paper submitted: Goode, Schiworski, Brown, Thrane, and Lasky You only thermoelastically deform once: Point Absorber Detection in LIGO Test Masses with YOLO. Submitted to Phys. Rev. X Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 1, 2024: New paper submitted: Clarke, Lasky, and Thrane Inferring jet physics from neutron star - black hole mergers with gravitational waves. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 6, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Passenger, Thrane, Lasky, Payne, Stevenson, and Farr Are all models wrong? Falsifying binary formation models in gravitational-wave astronomy. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 11, 2024: New paper submitted: Spencer, Goode, Sarin, and Lasky Directly inferring cosmology and the neutron-star equation of state from gravitational-wave mergers. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 1 - 4, 2024: I attended a wonderful conference in Goa, India, this week on neutron star equations of state. I gave an invited keynote talk on future multimessenger and gravitational-wave observations for constraining the equation of state.
Sept. 18, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Adamcewicz, Lasky, Thrane, and Mandel No evidence for a dip in the binary black hole mass spectrum. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept 9, 2024: Very pleased to welcome Sharan Banagiri to the group! Sharan joins as an OzGrav postdoc; he comes most recently from a postdoctoral position from the CIERA group at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Sept 2 - 3, 2024: I'm at the 30th anniversary conference for the Australasian Society of General Relativity and Gravitation (ASGRG), where I'm presenting a talk `Towards an Australian Gravitational-Wave Observatory`.
Aug 29, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Clarke, Magnall, Lasky, Metzger, Berger, and Sridhar The origin of the coherent radio flash potentially associated with GRB 201006A. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Aug 19 - 23, 2024: I'm at the 30th anniversary conference Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum in Cairns this week, learning all about the state-of-the-art in particle physics, and contributing an invited talk entitled 'Probing quantum-chromodynamics physics with current and future gravitational-wave observations'.
Aug 12, 2024: New paper submitted: Powell and Lasky The DAWES review: Gravitational-wave burst astrophysics. Submitted to PASA
Aug 6, 2024: New paper submitted: Clarke, Sarin, Howell, Lasky, and Thrane Quantifying the coincidence between gravitational waves and fast radio bursts from neutron star--black hole mergers. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
July 23, 2024: Congratulations to Jennifer Quinlan who recently finished her honours year. Jennifer was supervised by myself and Rowina Nathan, working on a machine-learning model for understanding and interpreting pulsar glitch observations.
July 1, 2024: Excited to welcome Gosia Curylo to the group. Gosia finished her PhD at the University of Warsaw working on nanohertz gravitational-waves from both a theoretical and observational perspective. It's wonderful to have Gosia join the Monash OzGrav group!
July 1, 2024: Level up -- Professor.
April 6 2024: Paper accepted for publication: LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5 - 4.5 Msun compact object and a neutron star. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 25, 2024: I'm attending the Astronomical Society of Australia's Annual Conference today where I'm on a panel discussing future observational facilities in Australia.
June 18, 2024: New paper submitted: Adamcewicz, Lasky, Thrane, and Mandel No evidence for a dip in the binary black hole mass spectrum. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
June 13, 2024: There's a nice article out today about a relatively new paper on gravitational-wave memory, where I provide independent commentary about the nice work.
June 12 - 14, 2024: I'm at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for the DAWN VII workshop where I'm an invited speaker and panelist discussing the international roadmap to the next generation of gravitational-wave observatories.
June 10 - 11, 2024: I'm at Penn State in the US for a next generation mock-data challenge workshop, where I'm giving an invited talk on multimessenger astronomy with kHz observatories.
May 16, 2024: New paper submitted: Passenger, Thrane, Lasky, Payne, Stevenson, and Farr Are all models wrong? Falsifying binary formation models in gravitational-wave astronomy. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
May 11 - 17, 2024: I'm attending the Gravitational-Wave Advanced Detector Workshop this week in Queensland, Australia, where we are discussing the future of infrastructure for gravitational-wave observatories. I'm convening and delivering two sessions through the week: one on the astrophysics of next-generation observatories, and one on the future of the global network.
May 8, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Clarke, Isi, Lasky, Thrane, et al Striking the right tone: towards a self-consistent framework for measuring black hole ringdowns. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
May 6, 2024: New paper submitted: Gupta et al. Possible Causes of False General Relativity Violations in Gravitational Wave Observations. Submitted to Check it out on the arXiv
April 19, 2024: Congratulations to University of Adelaide student Kendall Jenner, who today submitted her MPhil thesis on developing a new machine-learning model for performing astrophysical inference in gravitational-wave astronomy. I co-supervised her work with David Ottaway and Lingqiao Liu from Adelaide.
April 18, 19, 2024: I'm attending the UIIN Australian Symposium: Fueling Innovation Through University-Industry Collaboration for these couple of days, looking forward to learning about improving overall industry engagement and efforts that are going on in this space around the country.
April 16, 17, 2024: It's OzGrav2 launch time! We're celebrating the beginning of the new Centre of Excellence this week. It starts with a couple of days of strategising, followed by an opening ceremony celebration.
April 16, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Cheung, Lasky and Thrane Does spacetime have memories? Searching for gravitational-wave memory in the third LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational-wave transient catalogue. Accepted for publication in Class. Q. Grav. Check it out on the arXiv
April 12, 2024: New paper submitted: Sarin, Clarke, Magnall, Lasky, Metzger, Berger, and Sridhar The origin of the coherent radio flash potentially associated with GRB 201006A. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
April 9, 2024: New paper submitted: Tong, Guttman, Clarke, Lasky et al. Transdimensional inference for gravitational-wave astronomy with Bilby. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
April 8, 2024: I was involved in producing a video for Monash University's TeachHQ, which is a resource for educators in the University. The video is about the flipped-learning style of teaching, and goes into a little bit of detail about some of the challenges we had implementing flipped learning in first-year physics.
April 6 2024: New paper submitted: LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5 - 4.5 Msun compact object and a neutron star. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
April 1, 2024: Yesterday marked the end of an era, with the seven-year OzGrav Centre of Excellence coming to an end. Happily, though, this also marks the beginning of the second tranche of seven years of funding that starts today! We've collected a great group of people for the new Centre, and it's exciting to see what wonderful science we can do as united team!
Mar. 16 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Anzuini, Gomez-Banon, Pons, Melatos and Lasky Axion sourcing in dense stellar matter via CP-violating couplings. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 28, 2024: The Deputy Director of the NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab Lt. Gen. Larry James visited Monash today along with government and senior University dignitaries. I gave a presentation on all things the Monash Astrophysics group are working on, with particular focus on both gravitational-wave astronomy and planetary formation and modelling.
Nov. 10, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Adamcewicz, Galaudage, Lasky and Thrane Which black hole is spinning? Probing the origin of black-hole spin with gravitational waves. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 6, 2024: New paper submitted: Clarke, Isi, Lasky, Thrane, et al Striking the right tone: towards a self-consistent framework for measuring black hole ringdowns. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 2, 2024: Paper accepted for publication: Abbott et al. Search for gravitational-wave transients associated with magnetar bursts in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo data from the third observing run. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 29 - Feb. 2, 2024: I attended a fantastic conference this week at Swinburne called Transients Down Under, where I presented a talk on multimessenger astronomy with gravitational waves.
Jan. 25 , 2024: There's a nice write up of our PhD student Christian Adamcewicz's recent paper on black hole spins observed with gravitational waves on AAS Nova. Check it out here.
Jan. 1 , 2024: It's a pleasure to welcome Dr. Nir Guttman to the group. Nir is returning to academia after a long stint working for HP Indigo in Israel. Among other things, Nir will be driving development of tBilby, the transdimensional Bayesian inference software built of the successful Bilby package. We also welcome Lachlan Passenger who, upon successfully completing his honours in 2023 is beginning his PhD on gravitational-wave astronomy with Eric Thrane and myself.
Dec. 5-6, 2023: I'm at a conference at Macquarie University on the proposed Widefield Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) where I'm giving an invited talk on multimessenger astronomy in the era of the WST.
Nov. 23, 2023: Today was the AAL AGM, and I'm extremely pleased to report that I've been voted back in to serve as a non-executive Board Director.
Nov. 22, 2023: I'm still in Canberra, but this time at ANU for an AAL Board meeting.
Nov. 20-21, 2023: I'm in Canberra for an AAL-run Astronomy and Gravitational-Wave Industry Engagement workshop that is getting both academics in astronomy and GWs together with industry and government experts to figure out paths forward for better relationships to things like research translation and commercialisation.
Nov. 17, 2023: I was in Adelaide today for the annual OzGrav retreat. Great to catch up with national colleagues and hear about all the exciting stuff that's been happening in the Centre. I have a presentation on our progress towards building a gravitational-wave observatory in Australia.
Nov. 17, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Gardner, Sun, Borhanian, Lasky, Thrane, McClelland, and Slagmolen Multi-messenger astronomy with a Southern-Hemisphere gravitational-wave observatory. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 10, 2023: New paper submitted: Adamcewicz, Galaudage, Lasky and Thrane Which black hole is spinning? Probing the origin of black-hole spin with gravitational waves. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 1, 2023: We're advertising! As part of the new OzGrav Centre of Excellence to start in April 2024, we're advertising two postdoc positions in any field of gravitational-wave astronomy. Check out the ad here. This is part of a broader set of advertisements across the many OzGrav nodes. All advertised positions can be seen on the AAS jor register.
Oct. 13, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Magnall, Price, Lasky and Macpherson Inhomogeneous cosmology using general relativistic smoothed particle hydrodynamics coupled to numerical relativity. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 1, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Tian et al MWA rapid follow-up of gravitational wave transients: prospects for detecting prompt radio counterparts. Accepted for publication in PASA
Sept. 7-8, 2023: I'm heading to the University of Queensland today where I'm giving an invited colloquium to the School of Mathematics and Physics on the Future of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy. I'll also be giving an informal seminar to the cosmology and gravitational-wave group.
Sept. 7, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Adamcewicz, Lasky and Thrane Evidence for a correlation between binary black hole mass ratio and black-hole spins. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 5, 2023: The Grade 2 students at St Leonard's College are currently learning about 'Our place in the Universe'. I was lucky enough to be invited onto a panel of experts on artificial intelligence and drug designers to talk to these budding young scientists.
Sept. 5, 2023: The video of my Monash colloquium on the future of gravitational-wave astronomy is now available. Check it out on YouTube.
September 1 2023: New paper submitted: Anzuini, Gomez-Banon, Pons, Melatos and Lasky Axion sourcing in dense stellar matter via CP-violating couplings. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
August 30, 2023: I'm delivering the Monash School of Physics and Astronomy colloquium today, with a talk entitled: 'What's next in gravitational-wave astronomy'. The colloquium will be recorded, and I'll post a link to the video once it's uploaded.
August 25, 2023: New paper submitted: Gardner, Sun, Borhanian, Lasky, Thrane, McClelland, and Slagmolen Multi-messenger astronomy with a Southern-Hemisphere gravitational-wave observatory. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
August 3, 2023: A new article on the front cover of New Scientist is all about the search for gravitational-wave memory, and the potential implications it would have on our potential understanding of quantum gravity. I am quoted multiple times in the article, which is written by the fantastic Abby Beall.
July 28, 2023: New paper submitted: Magnall, Price, Lasky and Macpherson Inhomogeneous cosmology using general relativistic smoothed particle hydrodynamics coupled to numerical relativity. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
July 28, 2023: New paper submitted: Adamcewicz, Lasky and Thrane Evidence for a correlation between binary black hole mass ratio and black-hole spins. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
July 21-25, 2023: I'm in Beijing this week at a conference called 'the Path to kHz Gravitational Wave Astronomy' at Tsinghua University where I'm giving an invited talk on the astrophysical science case of the Australian-proposed NEMO observatory.
July 7, 2023: New paper submitted: Tian et al MWA rapid follow-up of gravitational wave transients: prospects for detecting prompt radio counterparts. Submitted to PASA
June 8, 2023: Together with colleagues Giulia Cinquegrana and Alex Heger, we were involved with Brandon Park Primary School to name an exoplanet as part of an IAU competition. We were luck enough to have our name chosen; the star and exoplanet system WASP-19 are know known respectively as Wattle and Banksia, named after native Australian flora. Read more about our system here, and the naming competition as a whole here.
June 5-9, 2023: I'm in London this week at a conference on gravitational-wave memory. On Monday of the conference I gave an invited plenary talk on our efforts to detect gravitational-wave memory using LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observations of binary black hole mergers.
June 1, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Nathan, Miles, Ashton, Lasky, Thrane, Reardon, Shannon and Cameron Improving pulsar-timing solutions through dynamics pulse fitting. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
May 25, 2023: Proud to be attending the 2022 Robert Street Doctoral Prize in Physics today, which is being awarded to former PhD student Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw. The prize is awarded yearly for the best PhD in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University.
May 22, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Panther and Lasky The effect of noise artefacts on gravitational-wave searches for neutron star post-merger remnants. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
May 19, 2023: I've been appointed to the Board of Astronomy Australia Ltd. (AAL); a not-for-profit company that supports Australian-based astronomers to access a range of world-class national and international astronomical facilities, and supports various development projects to upgrade or develop future national and international astronomical infrastructure. I'm looking forward to this opportunity to work with the rest of the Board, the AAL staff, and the Australian astronomy community.
May 15, 2023: Excited to have Simon Goode join the group today as a postdoc. Simon is an expert in transient astronomy and machine learning. He will be working on various problems including gravitational-wave cosmology as well as the data-analysis side of LIGO detector characterisation and commissioning.
May 12, 2023: I gave a presentation today on the OzGrav telecon introducing our Australian Gravitational-Wave Observatory Project
May 4, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Clarke, Chastain, Lasky, Thrane Nuclear physics with gravitational waves from neutron stars disrupted by black holes. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
May 1, 2023: The major outcome from our Adelaide planning meeting is the establishment of an Australian Gravitational-Wave Observatory Office Project, designed to drive forward the development of an Australian gravitational-wave observatory. I am very excited to have been nominated to be the initial Chair of the Executive Committee charged with setting up the organisational structures for this project.
April 20-21, 2023: We held a planning meeting in Adelaide with senior OzGrav people for determining the best path forward for developing and building a gravitational-wave observatory in Australia. It was great to discuss the interesting science and politics that needs to be undertaken to develop this exciting project. More to come soon!
April 9, 2023: Massive congratulations to PhD candidate Rowina Nathan who submitted her first, first-author paper today. The paper Improving pulsar-timing solutions through dynamic pulse fitting was submitted to both the arXiv and MNRAS. In it, we develop a beautiful method to dynamically fit pulsar pulsations instead of using traditional template fitting, thereby improving our ability to characterise pulse-shape variability, and ultimately make pulsars more sensitive to search for the nanohertz gravitational-wave background.
March 29, 2023: We're advertising!!! Come and join team Monash working on various aspects of gravitational-wave astronomy with myself and Eric Thrane. Check out the advertisement here, and please feel free to get in touch with any enquiries.
Mar. 21, 2023: New paper submitted: Panther and Lasky The effect of noise artefacts on gravitational-wave searches for neutron star post-merger remnants. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Mar. 4, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Baker, Lasky, Thrane, Ashton, Cantos, Lakerink, Leslie, Poole, and Reichart GWCloud: a searchable repository for the creation and curation of gravitational-wave inference results.. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 21, 2023: I am pleased to be announced as the Head of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group within the School of Physics and Astronomy. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the School to progress forward our agenda of world domination of astronomy and astrophysics.
Feb. 21, 2023: New paper submitted: Clarke, Chastain, Lasky, Thrane Nuclear physics with gravitational waves from neutron stars disrupted by black holes. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 17, 2023: A figure from our paper, led by former Monash postdoc Filippo Anzuini, has been selected as the front cover image for Physical Review Letters.
Feb. 7, 2023: I lectured at the annual Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (ANITA) summer school in Adelaide today on transient astrophysics, where Fiona Panther and I delivered an intensive one-day course on gravitational-wave astronomy.
Jan. 9, 2023: A new paper was just published in Nature claiming to detect kilohertz quasiperiodic oscillations from the aftermath of two short gamma-ray bursts. I wrote a Nature News and Views article on the discovery, that gives some context to the importance of this result, including the fact that future observations like this could potentially allow us to constrain the nuclear equation of state.
Jan. 6, 2023: Paper accepted for publication: Anzuini, Pons, Gomez-Banon, Lasky, Bianchini, Melatos Magnetic dynamo caused by axions in neutron stars. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Dec 12 - 16, 2022: Rounding out four conferences in four weeks, I'm attending the annual Australian Institute of Physics Congress this week in Adelaide, where I'm presenting an invited talk on the potential astrophysics we hope to learn from future gravitational-wave observations.
Dec 14, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Powell, Sun, Gereb, Lasky, and Dollmann Generating transient noise artifacts in gravitational-wave detector data with generative adversarial networks. Accepted for publication in Class. Q. Grav. Check it out on the arXiv
Dec 5 - 9, 2022: I attended the Gravitational Wave Astrophysics and Physics Workshop (GWPAW) this week, with more than 220 people attending from all over the world. I was fortunate enough to give an invited talk in the opening session of the conference on the potential for learning about the nuclear equation of state from current and future gravitational-wave observations.
Nov 28 - Dec 2, 2022: I'm attending the conference Supernova in the Gravitational Wave Detection Era this week at Swinburne University. I gave an invited talk on NEMO: A Next Generation Gravitational-Wave Observatory for Neutron Star Science.
Nov 24, 2022: Excited to be awarded a Discovery Project with Eric Thrane for $460,000 to work on a project entitled: A Transdimensional Approach to Gravitational-Wave Astronomy. If you're interested in this project, please feel free to reach out; we will be hiring a postdoc soon to play an integral part in the development of this project.
Nov 23-25, 2022: It was wonderful to attend the OzGrav Annual Retreat this week in Canberra, where we discussed both science and strategy around gravitational-wave astronomy in Australia for the coming decade.
Nov 22, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky, Nathan Missed opportunities: GRB 211211A and the case for continual gravitational-wave coverage with a single observatory.. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov 17, 2022: Congratulations to all of the Honours students in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University who completed their theses and oral exams today. As the Honours Coordinator I oversaw each of these exams, and was incredibly impressed with the quality and quantity of research that had been done by this extremely talented group of students. Particular congratulations to Macca Angus, who I co-supervised with Eric Thrane, and finished his thesis on test of the No-Hair Theorem using binary black hole mergers.
Nov 16, 2022: I gave a public talk tonight on gravitational-wave astronomy and the need for a new observatory in Australia to ANZAAS: The Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
Nov 4, 2022: Success! The OzGrav2 Centre of Excellence funding has been announced; we've been awarded $35 million for the next seven years! I'm incredibly proud to be part of this exciting bid. In the new Centre I'm going to be the Monash University Node Leader, and also lead the Gravity Theme, which is one of six core themes in the Centre.
Oct 30 - Nov 1, 2022: I attended an amateur astronomy festival this long weekend in regional Victoria in the beautiful town of Sea Lake. I was fortunate enough to be part of an astrophysics QnA session over a delicious three-course meal, and gave a sepearate presentation entitled 'New Ears on the Universe'
Oct 27, 2022: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky, Nathan Missed opportunities: GRB 211211A and the case for continual gravitational-wave coverage with a single observatory.. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 21, 2022: New paper submitted: Abbott et al. Search for gravitational-wave transients associated with magnetar bursts in Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo data from the third observing run. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 12, 2022: Huge congratulations to Teagan Clarke who had their first, first-author paper accepted last night. This is a really nice paper on how well we can measure the argument of periapsis in eccentric binary black hole systems with gravitational waves, and importantly, how much not measuring this quantity potentially biases measurements of other quantities. Congratulations, Teagan!
Oct 11-13, 2022: I'm attending the ACAMAR annual conference this week (albeit virtually), including giving a presentation on the science case for the future kilohertz gravitational-wave observatory, NEMO, as well as leading a discussion session on gravitational-wave astronomy and potential collaborations between China and Australia.
Oct 11, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Clarke, Romero-Shaw, Lasky, and Thrane Gravitational-wave inference for eccentric binaries: the argument of periapsis. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept 30, 2022: I just gave an invited seminar to Macquarie University's Research Centre for Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astrophotonics. I talked about the next steps in gravitational-wave astronomy, including understanding the formation history of stellar-mass mergers, and also the potential to build a new gravitational-wave observatory in Australia.
Sept 30, 2022: I've just had a 'Research Highlight' article published titled Background Memories, in the journal Science China: Physics, Mechanics and Astronomy.
Aug. 18, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Knee, Romero-Shaw, Lasky, McIver, Thrane A Rosetta Stone for eccentric gravitational waveform models. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Aug. 12, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Kouvatsos, Lasky, Quitzow-James and Sakellariadou Detectability of the gravitational-wave background produced by magnetar giant flares. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Aug. 11, 2022: New paper submitted: Anzuini, Pons, Gomez-Banon, Lasky, Bianchini, Melatos Magnetic dynamo caused by axions in neutron stars. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
July 29, 2022: New paper submitted: Knee, Romero-Shaw, Lasky, McIver, Thrane A Rosetta Stone for eccentric gravitational waveform models. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
July 21, 2022: I'm hiring! Looking for a postdoc to work on gravitational-wave cosmology with a grant entitled 'Precision cosmic expansion in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy'. Check out the advertisement and position description here, and shoot me an email if you're interested.
July 13, 2022: I've been away for the last few weeks, but in that time some exciting progress has been made by a number of my students and collaborators. Congratulations first of all to PhD student Teagan Clarke who submitted her first research paper, and also gave her first conference presentation at the Astronomical Society of Australia's annual meeting. Teagan even won the third best student talk award! Isobel Romero-Shaw also submitted another paper in which we show approximately four of the binary black hole mergers detected to date in gravitational waves have non-zero eccentricity, giving further weight to the hypothesis that most of these binary systems for dynamically in dense stellar environments. Finally, we submitted a paper that was a collaboration between OzGrav scientists (Jade Powell and Lilli Sun at Swinburne and ANU, respectively), and the Eliiza data science company, using machine learning to characterise noise artifacts in gravitational-wave detector data, and create artificial artificats that can be used to test search and parameter-estimation pipelines, as well as understand instrumental systematics. Each of these three papers are linked below.
July 1, 2022: New paper submitted: Powell, Sun, Gereb, Lasky, and Dollmann Generating transient noise artifacts in gravitational-wave detector data with generative adversarial networks. Submitted to Class. Q. Grav. Check it out on the arXiv
June 30, 2022: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Lasky, and Thrane Four eccentric mergers increase the evidence that LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA's binary black holes form dynamically. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
June 29, 2022: New paper submitted: Clarke, Romero-Shaw, Lasky, and Thrane Gravitational-wave inference for eccentric binaries: the argument of periapsis. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
June 15, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Huebner, Huppenkothen, Lasky, Inglis, Ick, and Hogg Searching for quasi-periodic oscillations in astrophysical transients using Gaussian processes. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J.
June 8, 2022: I gave an invited talk last night on the Copernicus Webinar series, where I spoke about gravitational waves, including understanding black hole formation mechanisms as well as trying to detect gravitational-wave memory.
May 31, 2022: Nikhil's and my recent PASA paper 'Multimessenger astronomy with a kHz-band gravitational-wave observatory' was just announced as an Editor's Pick from the Journal's Featured Article Collection.
May 23, 2022: Former PhD student Nikhil Sarin continues to win awards for his recent thesis, this time picking up a prestigious 2021 Vice-Chancellor's Commendation for Thesis Excellence. Congratulations, Nikhil!
May 12, 2022: Congratulations to my former PhD student Nikhil Sarin who as today awarded the Robert Street Prize for the best PhD in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash.
May 3, 2022: New paper submitted: Huebner, Huppenkothen, Lasky, Inglis, Ick, and Hogg Searching for quasi-periodic oscillations in astrophysical transients using Gaussian processes. Submitted to Astrophys. J.
April 28, 2022: New paper submitted: Baker, Lasky, Thrane, Ashton, Cantos, Lakerink, Leslie, Poole, and Reichart GWCloud: a searchable repository for the creation and curation of gravitational-wave inference results.. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
April 12, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Payne, Sun, Kremer, Lasky, and Thrane The imprint of superradiance on hierarchical black hole mergers. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Mar. 31, 2022: A huge congratulations to my former PhD student Hayley Macpherson, who has just been named an Einstein Fellow as part of the Hubble Fellowship program. Hayley will be moving to Chicago later this year to take up this prestigious position.
Mar 28, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky, Hernandez Vivanco, Stevenson, Chattopadhyay, Smith, and Thrane Linking the rates of neutron star binaries and short gamma-ray bursts. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Mar. 25, 2022: Katinka Gereb from the data science company Eliiza presented our work today on LIGO glitch classification on the weekly OzGrav telecon. While we're almost at the end of our formal engagement on this project, I'm hoping there is still lots of collaboration ahead of us. Amazingly, in just a six-week collaboration, we have almost publishable results! A fantastic outcome.
Mar. 23, 2022: I gave an invited colloquium today to the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne on gravitational-wave astronomy, including orbital eccentricity, gravitational-wave memory, and tests of the no-hair theorem. It was great to be in person again with a wonderful and interactive audience.
Mar. 22, 2022: The OzGrav2 Centre of Excellence grant was submitted today. A huge effort from an amazing team of people!! Fingers crossed for success.
Mar. 18, 2022: Isobel Romero-Shaw and I gave a presentation today to the Eliiza data-science team and also many of their industry clients. After giving an introduction to gravitational-wave astronomy and colliding black holes, we spoke about the data-science link between gravitational-wave astronomy, covid modelling, and everything in between. The turn out was fantastic (about 100 people), with fantastic engaging questions!
March 16, 2022: New paper submitted: Kouvatsos, Lasky, Quitzow-James and Sakellariadou Detectability of the gravitational-wave background produced by magnetar giant flares. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
March 3, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Hamburg, Burns, Ashton, Lasky and Lamb Low-efficiency long gamma-ray bursts: A case study with AT2020blt. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 24, 2022: It was a pleasure to give an invited virtual colloquium last night for a joint Japanese-German collaboration. I gave an update on the current status of gravitational-wave astronomy, focussing on strong-field tests of general relativity with LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA observations, as well as an update on pulsar timing array observations.
Feb. 20, 2022: I would like to welcome all the students undertaking honours in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash this year. I have taken on a new role as the honours coordinator, and am looking forward to working with this very talented group of students throughout the year.
Feb. 14, 2022: A very warm welcome to Rowina Nathan, who is beginning her PhD with me, Eric Thrane, and Greg Ashton this week. Rowina completed her honours last year at Monash, and will be working on both pulsar timing array science as well as LIGO/Virgo multimessenger astronomy.
Feb 11, 2022: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Thrane, and Lasky When models fail: an introduction to posterior predictive checks and model misspecification in gravitational-wave astronomy. Submitted to PASA Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 10, 2022: There's a really nice write-up of our recent paper, led by Isobel Romero-Shaw, trying to understand the formation history of binary black holes detected by LIGO and Virgo by looking for eccentric orbits in the catalogue of events. Read the article here in AAS Nova.
Jan. 28, 2022: Huge congratulations to the newly-minted Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw, who's PhD was conferred today at Monash University. Isobel's PhD, titled 'Eccentricity in gravitational-wave transients' significantly advanced our knowledge of the formation mechanisms of binary black hole systems that have been observed by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories. Isobel is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Monash working with Ilya Mandel, but will soon be moving over to Cambridge to take up a prestigious Herchel-Smith fellowship at DAMTP.
Jan 21, 2022: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky, Hernandez Vivanco, Stevenson, Chattopadhyay, Smith, and Thrane Linking the rates of neutron star binaries and short gamma-ray bursts. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 18, 2022: I gave a presentation today to the National Youth Science Forum about gravitational wave astronomy. It was amazing to see great engagement and fantastic questions from these Year 12 students.
Jan. 14, 2022: I gave a brief presentation today to the data-science company Eliiza about our industry-engagement project to characterize noise in the LIGO gravitational-wave detectors. Looking forward to getting this project started in the coming weeks.
Jan 11, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin and Lasky Multimessenger astronomy with a kHz-band gravitational-wave observatory. Accepted for publication in PASA Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 11, 2022: Paper accepted for publication: Huebner, Huppenkothen, Lasky and Inglis Pitfalls of periodograms: The non-stationarity bias in the analysis of quasi-periodic oscillations. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 5, 2022: Welcome to Filippo Anzuini, who has today joined my group as a postdoctoral research fellow. Filippo has just completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, working with Andrew Melatos, on the intersection between theoretical astrophysics of neutron stars and relativistic quantum field theory of dense matter.
Dec. 31, 2021: A new ebook has just been published that includes a chapter I wrote about gravitational-wave astronomy. The book is Multimessenger Astronomy in Practice, published by IOP science. A hardcopy of the book will be available shortly.
Dec. 24, 2021: We were awarded a grant! Chris Blake (Swinburne) and I were just awarded $450,000 from the Australian Research Council for a grant entitled: 'Precision cosmic expansion in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy'. Keep an eye out in the near future for exciting postdoc opportunities to work on gravitational-wave cosmology with Chris and I.
Dec. 8, 2021: Here's a link to a beautifully-written article on the hunt for gravitational-wave memory and its physics and astrophysical implications in Quanta Magazine. The article includes a few quotes from me.
Dec. 7, 2021: Excited to announce a research partnership with the data science company Eliiza, which is being kicked off with a Research Translation Seed Grant from OzGrav. We plan to look into noise classification and mitigation in gravitational-wave observatories using Eliiza's artificial intelligence expertise. Read about the press release in Tech Business News.
Nov. 26, 2021: Congratulations Dr Moritz Huebner, who's PhD was conferred today at Monash University. Moritz' PhD, entitled 'Bayesian Inference in Astrophysics: Applications to Gravitational-Wave Memory and Quasi-Periodic Oscillations', includes the first searches for gravitational-wave memory in LIGO/Virgo data, and also an expose on quasi-periodic oscillations in astrophysical transient. Moritz is taking up a postdoctoral position at the University of Melbourne with Prof. Andrew Melatos. Congratulations, Moritz!
Nov. 24-26, 2021: This week is the online OzGrav Annual Retreat, with lots of interesting activities and discussions, including about my favourite recent topic NEMO!
Nov. 18, 2021: I gave an invited talk to the postgraduate Course on Neutron Star Physics tonight at the IGFAE (Instituto Galego de Fisica de Altas Enerxias) in spain on the physics of binary neutron star mergers.
Nov. 15, 2021: Congratulations to Rowina Nathan and Teagan Clarke who today submitted their honours theses on a pulsar timing method allowing for pulse-shape variability, and eccentricity in binary black holes mergers, respectively. Congratulations also to Paul Vasarelli who submitted his MSc thesis today on neutron-star black hole mergers with future gravitational-wave observatories.
Nov. 11, 2021: Congratulations to Isobel Romero-Shaw who today submitted her PhD thesis entitled `Eccentricity in Gravitational-Wave Transients`. Isobel started with Eric Thrane and I in 2018, and has had a remarkably productive PhD. She is taking up a postdoc position in Ilya Mandel's group at Monash.
Nov. 10, 2021: I am very proud to have been named as Australia's top researcher in `Condensed Matter Physics and Semiconductors' by The Australian Newspaper in their 2021 Research Special Report.
Oct. 26, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky and Thrane Did Goryachev et al. detect megahertz gravitational waves?. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 25, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Zevin, Romero-Shaw, Kremer, Thrane and Lasky Implications of Eccentric Observations on Binary Black Hole Formation Channels. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 22, 2021: New paper submitted: Sarin and Lasky Multimessenger astronomy with a kHz-band gravitational-wave observatory. Submitted to PASA
Oct 20, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Romero-Shaw, Lasky and Thrane Signs of eccentricity in two gravitational-wave signals may indicate a sub-population of dynamically assembled binary black holes. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct 18, 2021: An awesome achievement today: Paul Easter had his PhD thesis conferred today and is now officially Dr. Paul! It's been a fantastic journey for Paul, coming back to study undergraduate physics as a mature-aged student, and then going the whole way through undergrad, honours, and successfully completing an excellent PhD. Congratulations Dr. Easter.
Oct 8, 2021: A huge congratulations to Dr. Nikhil Sarin who has had his PhD thesis conferred today. Nikhil is currently working with me as a postdoc, but will soon be taking up a prestigious NORDITA fellowship in Sweden.
Oct 6-8, 2021: I'm attending some of the DAWN VI Meeting on Next Generation Gravitational Wave Observatories this week, including sitting on an invited panel discussing a roadmap for current observatories until the Cosmic Explorer/Einstein Telescope era.
Sept 30, 2021: I was the first guest on a brand new podcast spaghetification hosted by the amazing Clare Kenyon (RedLippedAstro) and Mark Iscaro (TheDrunkAstronomer), where we talked about gravitational waves, astrophysics research, and penguins! Check out the podcast here.
Sept 12, 2021: I did a live Q&A stream today with the Astronomical Society of Victoria, where a panel of Clare Kenyon, Stephie Barnard, Stefan Nebl, and myself answered lots of interesting questions about the Universe.
Sept 9, 2021: Ilya Mandel and I gave a presentation tonight to alumni of the Faculty of Science at Monash University. Our presentation was all about the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy. A recording of the event can be found here.
Sept 1, 2021: I'm attending the 17th International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics this week, where I gave an invited plenary talk entitled 'The Future of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy'.
Aug 27, 2021: more wonderful news: Moritz Huebner submitted his PhD thesis today. Moritz began his PhD in 2018 with Eric Thrane and myself. His thesis covers two fascinating topics in astronomy that are underpinned by somewhat common statistical techniques. His work towards the development of the Bilby parameter estimation software has been invaluable, and enabled him to perform the first searches for gravitational-wave memory with LIGO/Virgo data. In the last year he has also been looking at understanding various statistical techniques to look for quasi-periodic oscillations in transient light curves.
Aug 18, 2021: New paper submitted: Huebner, Huppenkothen, Lasky and Inglis Pitfalls of periodograms: The non-stationarity bias in the analysis of quasi-periodic oscillations. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Aug 9, 2021: I'm very proud of Paul Easter who today submitted his PhD thesis. Paul began his PhD in 2018 with Andy Casey and myself, after completing honours under our supervision the year before. He has written an excellent PhD developing methods to detect gravitational waves from post-merger remnants, and also do parameter estimation to determine the physics of these exotic objects once a successful detection has been made. Paul has three, first-author papers on this topic, and has contributed to Bilby development and another paper on machine-learning methods in gravitational-wave astronomy.
Aug 4, 2021: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Lasky and Thrane Signs of eccentricity in two gravitational-wave signals may indicate a sub-population of dynamically assembled binary black holes. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
July 28, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Strang, Melatos, Sarin and Lasky Exploring properties of neutron stars born in gamma-ray bursts with plerion-like X-ray plaeau. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
July 23, 2021: One of the perks of being locked down in our home is that I'm more easily able to visit schools to talk about all forms of exciting science. This week I've visited a number of year 7 science classes at Haileybury College. It's wonderful to hear the amazing questions they have about astrophysics, gravity, and the Universe as a whole.
July 23, 2021: New paper submitted: Payne, Sun, Kremer, Lasky, and Thrane The imprint of superradiance on hierarchical black hole mergers. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
July 15, 2021: I'm incredibly proud of Nikhil Sarin who today submitted his PhD thesis. I supervised Nikhil for his honours thesis back in 2017, before he started his PhD with Greg Ashton and myself in 2018. Nikhil has written a wonderful thesis on nascent neutron stars and their observational signatures. He will be working with me as a postdoc for the next few months before heading off to Nordita in Sweden to undertake a prestigious Nordita fellowship.
July 12, 2021: We're advertising!! Come and work with Ilya Mandel, Eric Thrane, and myself as part of the Monash University OzGrav node. We're looking for people broadly interested in gravitational-was astronomy and/or high-energy astrophysics. The postdoc positions are for two years; check out the advertisement here.
July 12, 2021: I'm attending the Astronomical Society of Australia's annual meeting this week. The conference is really well organised, with local hubs in each state for those able to attend, and virtual attendance for all others. I'm looking forward to actually getting to discuss science with colleagues in person again! Later in the week I'll be presenting a talk about building a NEMO gravitational-wave observatory in Australia.
July 12, 2021: Check out a nice write up on AAS NOVA of our recent research led by Juan Calderon Bustillo on using single gravitational-wave observations to get percent-level measurements of the Hubble constant.
July 10, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Smith et al. Bayesian inference for gravitational waves from binary neutron star mergers in third-generation observatories. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
July 7, 2021: I'm virtually attending the 16th Marcel Grossmann conference this week, where I'm giving an invited talk about the proposed NEMO gravitational-wave observatory.
June 29, 2021: The LIGO/Virgo collaborations have announced the first two bona-fide detections of gravitational waves from collisions of neutron stars with black holes. A wonderful result, congratulations to all involved. Great to see Monash's Rory Smith leading much of the analysis and paper writing for the collaborations, and doing a fantastic job in the national press. Also very exciting to see our Bilby software doing the heavy lifting for the astrophysical inference of these exciting new discoveries.
June 24, 2021: There's an interesting new blog post about Paul Easter's recent paper with myself and Andy Casey about trying to use gravitational waves to measure when neutron star post-merger remnants collapse to form black holes.
June 24, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Romero-Shaw, Kremer, Lasky, Thrane, and Samsing Gravitational Waves as a Probe of Globular Cluster Formation and Evolution. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
June 18, 2021: New paper submitted: Zevin, Romero-Shaw, Kremer, Thrane and Lasky Implications of Eccentric Observations on Binary Black Hole Formation Channels. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 14, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Huebner, Lasky, and Thrane The Memory Remains (Undetected): Updates from the Second LIGO/Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 10, 2021: Excited to announce that I've been promoted to Associate Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash.
June 9, 2021: New paper submitted: Easter, Lasky and Casey Can we measure the collapse time of a post-merger remnant for a future GW170817-like event?. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 4, 2021: New paper submitted: Sarin, Hamburg, Burns, Ashton, Lasky and Lamb Low-efficiency long gamma-ray bursts: A case study with AT2020blt. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 1, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin and Lasky The evolution of binary neutron star post-merger remnants: a review. Accepted for publication in General Relativity and Gravitation Check it out on the arXiv
May 27, 2021: There's a nice write up about our Hubble constant paper using future gravitational-wave observations in Space Australia today.
May 24, 2021: New paper submitted: Sarin, Ashton, Lasky, Ackley, Mong, and Galloway CDF-S XT1: The off-axis afterglow of a neutron star merger at Z = 2.23. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
May 7, 2021: New paper submitted: Huebner, Lasky, and Thrane The Memory Remains (Undetected): Updates from the Second LIGO/Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
May 5, 2021: The OzGrav press release for our recent article on our ability to measure the Hubble constant using gravitational waves, led by Juan Calderon Bustillo, has been picked up by Phys.org and shared widely on social media - just don't read the comments!
April 22, 2021: Monash's Lens magazine has published a nice write up about our work driving towards a ground-based gravitational-wave detector in Australia called NEMO -- read the article here.
April 16, 2021: I gave an invited colloquium to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Vanderbilt University today. My talk was entitled: The Future of Gravitational Wave Astronomy
April 7, 2021: Paper accepted for publication: Calderon Bustillo, Leong, Dietrich, and Lasky Mapping the Universe expansion: Enabling percent-level measurements of the Hubble constant with a single binary neutron-star merger detection. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
March 24, 2021: New paper submitted: Smith et al. Bayesian inference for gravitational waves from binary neutron star mergers in third-generation observatories. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
March 23, 2021: I gave an invited colloquium to the Gravity group at the University of Virginia. My talk was entitled: Adventures in Gravitational-wave Astronomy: testing for hair, memory, and eccentricity.
March 22, 2021: I'm excited to be part of the Steering Committee that will work on the OzGrav2.0 Centre of Excellence bid. This is the next iteration of the successful OzGrav COE.
Feb. 26, 2021: I gave a talk today at the Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (ANITA) Virtual Workshop on 'Optimizing NEMO and the Future of Gravitational Wave Astronomy in Australia'
Feb. 20, 2021: Congratulations to my PhD student Nikhil Sarin, who has accepted a postdoctoral position at Nordita in Stockholm. Nikhil has worked with myself and Greg Ashton on various aspects of multimessenger astronomy, focusing particularly on gamma-ray bursts and the aftermath of binary neutron star mergers. Nikhil still has a few months to finish his thesis before beginning his postdoc later in the year, but I'm looking forward to following the bright future Nik has ahead of himself.
Feb. 15, 2021: Congratulations to honours student Ethan Payne who has been offered a PhD position at Caltech beginning later this year. Ethan completed his honours with Eric Thrane and myself, looking at multiple different aspects of gravitational-wave astronomy. It's been a pleasure working with Ethan for a number of years now, ever since I taught him in first-year physics while he was still completing high school, and I look forward to many years of collaboration.
Feb. 1, 2021: I gave a lecture tonight to the Katmandu Astrophysics Summer School, giving a general introduction to gravitational-wave science and data analysis.
Jan. 14, 2021: New paper submitted: Hernandez-Vivanco, Lasky, Thrane, Smith, Chatterjee, Banik, Motta and Thomas Temperature dependent appearance of exotic matter makes nascent neutron stars spin faster. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 23, 2020: Very pleased to be part of two successful grants announced today. Both are from the Australian Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities 2021 programme. The first, led by Ryan Shannon at Swinburne and awarded $672,000, is to build a new backend for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) for detecting and localising fast radio bursts. The second, led by David McClelland at ANU and awarded $3,000,000, is to continue Australian participation in building and commisioning the A+ detectors. Details of both grants can be found here
Dec. 15, 2020: New paper submitted: Sarin and Lasky The evolution of binary neutron star post-merger remnants: a review. Submitted to General Relativity and Gravitation Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 15-16, 2020: I'm attending and presenting at the Centre of Excellence planning workshop for OzGrav2.0. I gave a presentation on the next ten years of gravitational-wave astronomy, with a particular focus on binary neutron star mergers.
Dec. 14, 2020: New paper submitted: Strang, Melatos, Sarin and Lasky Exploring properties of neutron stars born in gamma-ray bursts with plerion-like X-ray plaeau. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.
Dec. 14, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Calderon Bustillo, Lasky, and Thrane Black-hole spectroscopy, the no-hair theorem and GW150914: Kerr vs. Occam. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 7, 2020: Some great news announced today from Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) that the Gravitatioanl Wave Data Centre has received another $1M funding from NCRIS to support activities through FY 21/22. Read the announcement here. As the Chair of the GWDC Science Advisory Panel, I'm proud of all the hard work that has gone into the GWDC, and looking forward to big things coming from the centre.
Dec. 1, 2020: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Kremer, Lasky, Thrane, and Samsing Gravitational Waves as a Probe of Globular Cluster Formation and Evolution. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 23-27, 2020: This week is the OzGrav Annual Retreat. On Monday I was part of a panel session for early career researchers, providing tips for writing successful grants. On Wednesday I am giving an overview presentation for the relativistic astrophysics programme, and on Friday I am giving a presentation with update and future directions for the Gravitational Wave Data Centre.
Nov. 19, 2020: Tonight was the opening night of the WunderGym art exhibition entitled The Biggest Explosions in the Universe, where I was the artists mentor. You can take a virtual wander through the exhibition here.
Nov. 17, 2020: I gave an invited talk today at a workshop held between Japanese and Australian scientists about exploring where and how to build a NEMO-like gravitational-wave detector. My talk outlined the full science case for such an observatory.
Nov. 11, 2020: New paper submitted: Ashton, Lasky, Nathan, and Palfreyman Flickering of the Vela pulsar during its 2016 glitch. Submitted to Nature Astronomy: Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 11, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Payne, Talbot, Lasky, Thrane and Kissel Gravitational-wave astronomy with a physical calibration model. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 6, 2020: AAS NOVA did a nice write up of our recent paper on the eccentricity of the massive black hle binary GW190521 led by Isobel Romero-Shaw
Nov. 3-5, 2020: I am at the ACAMAR Virtual Workshop this week where we are discussing current and future synergies between Australian and Chinese astronomy programmes. I am giving an invited presentation on opportunities for ground-based gravitational-wave astronomy, concentrating particularly on our NEMO design.
Nov. 1, 2020: Today I began as a Mentor for an arts programme - yep, you read that correctly! WunderGym is an artists programme that looks to create exhibits using both realt artists (not me) and other people as mentors. For the next six weeks, a group of artists will be creating an exhibition around the theme of gravitational waves. Today I gave a two-hour Q & A session about gravitational waves in preparation for the exhibit.
Oct. 28, 2020: New paper submitted: Sarin, Ashton, Lasky, Ackley, Mong, and Galloway CDF-S XT1: An off-axis neutron star merger at z = 2.23. Submitted to Nature:
Oct. 11, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Payne, Banagiri, Lasky and Thrane Searching for anisotropy in the distribution of binary black hole mergers. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 10, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Hernandez Vivanco, Smith, Thrane and Lasky A scalable random forest regressor for combining neutron-star equation of state measurements: A case study with GW170817 and GW190425. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 9, 2020: Congratulations to my former post-doc Juan Calderon Bustillo, who has just had some interesting work published in Nature Communications Physics, showing that merging black holes can have two chirps, and that these can be used to probe the final horizon of the remnant black hole. This work was started while Juan was at Monash working as part of my ARC Discovery Project.
Oct. 6, 2020: New paper submitted: Calderon Bustillo, Lasky, and Thrane Black-hole spectroscopy, the no-hair theorem and GW150914: Kerr vs. Occam. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 6, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Romero-Shaw, Lasky, Thrane and Calderon Bustillo GW190521: orbital eccentricity and signatures of dynamical formation in a binary black hole merger signal. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 5, 2020: I wrote a blog about how to enage with first-year undergraduate physics students using gravitational and nuclear physics. It's published on the Wiley Higher Education Australia website.
Oct. 3, 2020: I was interviewed for the first podcast of a new series for the LIGO India consortium. We cover lots of ground in about ten minutes, including some of my research and the excitement around new detectors such as LIGO India and our proposed NEMO.
Oct. 4, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky, and Ashton Interpreting the x-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts with radiative losses and millisecond magnetars. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 25, 2020: The incredibly talented Isobel Romero-Shaw has published a kids book on the etymology of the names of planets. Amazing and beautiful graphics (also done by Isobel) as well as a truly engaging read. Check it out on Amazon
Sept. 25, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Ackley et al Neutron star extreme matter observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network. Accepted for publication in PASA Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 22, 2020: New paper submitted: Payne, Talbot, Lasky, Thrane and Kissel Gravitational-wave astronomy with a physical calibration model. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 2, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Romero-Shaw et al. Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with Bilby: Validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 14, 2020: I was invited to give a talk to the Astronomy group at the University of Queensland today, where I gave a talk entitled: Binary Neutron Star Mergers: The Most Extreme Laboratories in the Universe.
Sept. 11, 2020: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Lasky, Thrane and Calderon Bustillo GW190521: orbital eccentricity and signatures of dynamical formation in a binary black hole merger signal. Submitted Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 9, 2020: A fun outreach event tonight. I went along to a virtual space night for the Brighton Sea Scouts group, where I spoke with the cubs (7.5 - 11 years old) about what astrophysicists do, and answered all their questions about how the Universe works.
Sept. 3, 2020: The LIGO/Virgo collaborations have just announced the detection of the most massive black holes yet. The system is known as GW190521; my group has done a lot of work on this event, including most notably Isobel Romero-Shaw and former postdoc Juan Caderon Bustillo, who worked mainly on the event while at Monash. Isobel was also interviewed by the ABC in a great article that gives good insight into why we find this even so exciting.
Sept. 2, 2020: Proud to announce that I'm a co-author of the first Australia-New Zealand edition of the first-year physics textbook Halliday's Fundamentals of Physics published by Wiley.
Aug 18, 2020: More press today for our proposed NEMO gravitational-wave detector, including some quotes from me. Check it out.
Aug 17-21, 2020: I'm excited to be virtually attending the meeting Compact Stars and QCD 2020 being hosted by the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences. The conference is being lived streamed, and I'm giving an invited talk on Thursday about how we can learn about the nuclear equation of state from post-merger remnants of neutron star mergers.
Aug 14, 2020: The Australian Research Council produces an annual book of reseearch highlights, and we made the cover!! Beautiful artwork by the amazing Carl Knox, with science about the glitch in the Vela pulsar led by Greg Ashton and with Vanessa Graber and Jim Palfreyman. Check it out here.
Aug 13, 2020: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky, and Ashton Interpreting the x-ray afterglows of gamma-ray bursts with radiative losses and millisecond magnetars. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Aug 13, 2020: New paper submitted: Hernandez Vivanco, Smith, Thrane and Lasky A scalable random forest regressor for combining neutron-star equation of state measurements: A case study with GW170817 and GW190425. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
July 28, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Easter, Ghonge, Lasky, Casey, Clark, Hernandez Vivanco and Chatziioannou Detection and parameter estimation of binary neutron star merger remnants. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
July 24, 2020: Today is the Monash Faculty of Science annual awards. Congratulations to all, most notably Hayley Macpherson was awarded the Mollie Holman Doctoral Award for the best PhD in Science, Ethan Payne awarded a special mention in the Dean's Honours list, and Greg Ashton receiving a very well-deserved nomination for Research Excellence for an Early Career Researcher. Congratulations to all!
July 21, 2020: I gave a talk today to the Orange Pulsar meeting on the science case and instrument design for our proposed high-frequency detector NEMO.
July 14, 2020: I attended and presented at a fantastic meeting (albeit at 3am local time) this morning to discuss the future of ground-based gravitational-wave astronomy instrumentation. It was a meeting involving the European Einstein Telescope Consortium, the US Cosmic Explorer Consortium, and our NEMO team from OzGrav. I was fortunate enough to present the key science case for our proposed NEMO.
July 13, 2020: I was interviewed by the national Community and Indigenous Radio Station The Wire about our proposed new high-frequency gravitational-wave detector NEMO. Listen to the interview here.
July 8, 2020: I've been a big part of the OzGrav team that has now published the science case and design for a gravitational-wave detector that we're calling NEMO: the Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory. The article was made public on the arXiv today. We also did some great pres around the article, including a really nice article in The Age newspaper, as well as a press release from Monash University. NEMO has also been listed as a recommended project in the Australian Academy of Sciences Decadal Plan mid term review that was also released today.
July 3, 2020: I gave a webinar today representing OzGrav as part of the Australian Institute of Physics webinar series. My talk presented the details of a high-frequency gravitational-wave detector, OzHF, that we would like to build in Australia to discover merging neutron stars throughout the Universe and learn fundamental nuclear physics. If you missed the webinar, you can watch the recording on YouTube here. The paper and a press release will appear next week.
June 24, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Abbott et al. GW190814: Gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 23 Msun black hole with a 2.6 Msun compact object. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 23, 2020: New paper submitted: Payne, Banagiri, Lasky and Thrane Searching for anisotropy in the distribution of binary black hole mergers. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 23, 2020: New paper submitted: Calderon Bustillo, Dietrich and Lasky Higher-order gravitational-wave modes will allow for percent-level measurements of Hubble’s constant with single binary neutron star merger observations. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 17, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Divarkala, Thrane, and Lasky and Whiting Memory effect or cosmic string? Classifying gravitational-wave bursts with Bayesian inference. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 11, 2020: New paper submitted: Ackley et al Neutron star extreme matter observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network. Submitted to Phys. Rev. X Check it out on the arXiv
June 11, 2020: New paper submitted: Calderon Bustillo, Dietrich and Lasky Higher-order gravitational-wave modes will allow for percent-level measurements of Hubble’s constant with single binary neutron star merger observations. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.
June 2, 2020: New paper submitted: Easter, Ghonge, Lasky, Casey, Clark, Hernandez Vivanco and Chatziioannou Detection and parameter estimation of binary neutron star merger remnants. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 4 2020: I gave a public outreach presentation to the Beaumaris Rotary Club tonight about the new and exciting field of gravitational-wave astronomy. Thank you very much to the Rotary Club for the amazing opportunity.
June 2, 2020: The next Bilby paper has been released today. We re-analyse all previously detected gravitational-wave events from the first two LIGO/Virgo observing runs, highlighiting the robustness and usability of the Bilby parameter estimation software. Congratulations to the entire amazing team involved, particulary those who led this from start to finish.
June 2, 2020: The next Bilby paper has been released today. We re-analyse all previously detected gravitational-wave events from the first two LIGO/Virgo observing runs, highlighiting the robustness and usability of the Bilby parameter estimation software. Congratulations to the entire amazing team involved, particulary those who led this from start to finish.
June 2, 2020: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw et al. Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with Bilby: Validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
May 25, 2020: Congratulations again to my former PhD student Hayley Macpherson, who has now been awarded the Astronomical Society of Australia's 2020 Charlene Heisler Prize for the most outstanding PhD thesis in Astronomy.
April 6, 2020: Congratulations to my former PhD student Hayley Macpherson, who was just awarded the Mollie Holman Medal for the best PhD in the Science Faculty. This is the among the highest academic honours bestowed at Monash, to which Hayley is a thoroughly deserving winner.
April 3, 2020: I presented an update of the science case for the OzHF project on today's OzGrav call. OzHF is a design for a dedicated high-frequency gravitational-wave detector targetting particularly neutron star science and astrophysics. We have a design for the interferometer, which includes a realistic noise budget, and have identified key science drivers for the experiment. An OzGrav paper shuold be appearing shortly.
March 23, 2020: Like many, I've started working from home full time, and am transitioning the first-year physics course to fully online mode. I wish all of those students the best as we all struggle through these chaotic and unfortunate times. I look forward to engaging with each and every student online through all the different resources we are making available.
March 9, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky and Ashton Gravitational waves or deconfined quarks: what causes the premature collapse of neutron stars born in short gamma-ray bursts?. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 21, 2020: Postdoc Juan Calderon Bustillo leaves our group today, headed for a new position at Chinese University Hong Kong. It's been fantastic having Juan in the group for the last couple of years, and I wish him all the best in his future career.
Feb. 7, 2020: New paper submitted: Adya et al. Ground Based Gravitational Wave Astronomy in the Asian Region. Submitted to AAPPS Bulletin Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 5, 2020: More media for my fantastic and amazing PhD students. This time, Moritz Huebner's work on detecting gravitational-wave memory is being covered by Phys.org. Also published in spanish, polish, and Indonesian!
Feb. 4, 2020: Here's a nice write up of our recent paper on trying to detect eccentricities in the orbits of binary black hole collisions, in an attempt to understand their formation history. The paper this is based on is led by my excellent PhD student Isoberl Romero-Shaw
Jan. 31, 2020: Today we met with representatives from the banking sector, particularly ANZ, in a workshop to discuss possible synergies with data analysis methods between gravitational-wave science and finance/risk modelling. Together with Eric Thrane, I presented an overview of OzGrav's work on the data side of gravitational waves. Read more about the day here.
Jan. 18, 2020: Paper accepted for publication: Banagiri, Coughlin, Clark, Lasky, et al. Constraining the Gravitational-Wave Afterglow From a Binary Neutron Star Coalescence. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 16, 2020: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky and Ashton Gravitational waves or deconfined quarks: what causes the premature collapse of neutron stars born in short gamma-ray bursts?. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 8, 2020: The LIGO/Virgo Collaborations have announced the detection of the second-ever binary neutron star merger detected in gravitational waves: GW190425 - The ANZAC Day event. This is a significantly heavier system than any double neutron star systems seen in our galaxy. Monash postdocs Greg Ashton and Xingjiang Zhu played huge roles in the discovery; read about the Monash press release here. Our Bilby code was also used in understanding the details of this event.
Dec. 19, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Huebner, Talbot, Lasky and Thrane Thanks for the memory: measuring gravitational-wave memory in the first LIGO/Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 16, 2019: The 'White Paper' on Gound-Based Gravitational-Wave Astronomy in Australia has just appeared on the arXiv. This has been submitted to the National Committee for Astronomy as part of the Decadal Plan for Australian Astronomy 2016-2-25: Mid-term Review
Dec. 7, 2019: Our recent work on gravitational-wave memory was just written up in a nice article on space.com
Nov. 28, 2019: New paper submitted: Huebner, Talbot, Lasky and Thrane Thanks for the memory: measuring gravitational-wave memory in the first LIGO/Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 20, 2019: New paper submitted: Divarkala, Thrane, and Lasky and Whiting Memory effect or cosmic string? Classifying gravitational-wave bursts with Bayesian inference. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 19-22, 2019: I'm at the OzGrav Annual Retreat in Lorne this week for some great science discussions and strategic planning.
Nov. 7, 2019: I'm at the 24th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics at the huge Adelaide Convention Centre in Adelaide today, where I'm giving an invited plenary presentation on computing in gravitational-wave astrophysics.
Oct. 29, 2019: New paper submitted: Thrane, Oslowski, and Lasky Ultra-relativistic astrophysics using multi-messenger observations of double neutron stars with LISA and the SKA. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 28 - Nov. 1, 2019: I'm in Yokohama, Japan, this week for the Yamada Conference LXXI: Gamma-ray Bursts in the gravitational-wave era 2019 where I'm giving a talk on gravitational waves from neutron-star post-merger remnants.
Oct. 21-22, 2019: I was in Adelaide Monday and Tuesday giving three presentations in two days. This included two invited undergraduate lectures from the South Autralian branch of the Australian Institute of Physics at the University of Adelaide and Flinders University. I also gave an invited colloquium to the University of Adelaide physics group entitled Neutron Star Physics from Current and Future Gravitational-Wave Observations.
Oct. 18, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Romero-Shaw, Lasky, and Thrane Searching for Eccentricity: Signatures of Dynamical Formation in the First Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 26, 2019: I'm very proud to have been listed in The Australian Newspaper's list of the top 40 Australian researchers across all sciences less than 10 years in their careers. Read more about the announcement here.
Sept. 17, 2019: I'm at the Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) and National Committee of Astronomy (NCA) 2019 Data and Computing workshop today, in part to represent the Gravitational Wave Data Centre. Some of the main discussion topics include strategic planning for coordinated data and computing resources across Australian astronomy.
Sept. 13, 2019: Extremely proud of my PhD student Isobel Romero-Shaw, who today submitted her first paper. In the paper, we perform astrophysical inference on the first catalogue of binary black hole mergers detected with Advanced LIGO and Virgo, looking for signs of orbital eccentricity that would give hints as to their formation history. We set upper limits on the eccentricity of all events that indicates they likely formed through binary stellar evolution. There are exciting times ahead, with theoretical predictions suggesting we may be able to detect non-negligible eccentricities from dynamically formed mergers very soon!
Sept. 13, 2019: New paper submitted: Romero-Shaw, Lasky, and Thrane Searching for Eccentricity: Signatures of Dynamical Formation in the First Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 6, 2019: New paper submitted: Hernandez Vivanco, Thrane, Smith, Lasky, Talbot, and Raymond Measuring the neutron star equation of state with gravitational waves: the first forty binary neutron star mergers. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Sept. 5, 2019: New paper submitted: Banagiri, Coughlin, Clark, Lasky, et al. Constraining the Gravitational-Wave Afterglow From a Binary Neutron Star Coalescence. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
August 24, 2019: Took part in an amazing event today in Sydney organised by New Scientist. The event included five outstanding speakers (and myself) talking about The Biggest Questions in Physics. We managed to cover everything from the Big Bang, the nature of dark energy, dark matter, black holes, gravitational waves, and even the nature of time itself!
August 13, 2019: Our paper on the Vela pulsar glitch was published today in Nature Astronomy. Greg Ashton and I did some local press, including an article published in The Age and on page two of the Sydney Morning Herald. Among many others, there was an article in Forbes, and also a (sligthly strange) write up on CNET.
March 15, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Hernandez Vivanco, Smith, Thrane and Lasky Accelerated detection of the binary neutron star gravitational-wave background. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
August 4, 2019: Today is the Monash University Open Day. A great opportunity for prospective students to learnd what it's like studying at Monash! Along with course advice, I gave a public talk about the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy.
July 24, 2019: I gave a talk today at Padua Secondary College on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula today. It was fantastic to see about 250 yr 10-12 students so engaged hearing about gravitational-wave science!
July 20, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Easter, Lasky, Casey, Rezzolla and Takami Computing fast and reliable gravitational waveforms of binary neutron star merger remnants. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
July 10, 2019: Congratulations to my PhD student Isobel Romero-Shaw who was awarded the best student talk at the Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Meeting this week!
July 3-11, 2019: I'm at the Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Meeting this week, where I presented a talk covering some of the many projects we're doing with our new Bilby software. Many of my PhD students also presented: Isobel Romero-Shaw gave a plenary talk on measuring eccentricity in the binary black holes LIGO has detected, Moritz Huebner talked about detecting gravitational-wave memory, and Paul Easter presented a poster on gravitational waves from post-merger remnants.
July 3, 2019: Our new paper hit the arXiv today. It's been accepted into the journal Nature Astronomy, to appear in the journal in mid-August. We looked at the 2016 Vela glitch and concluded the following: 1) The rise time of the glitch is less than 12 seconds-the previous record was 30 seconds. 2) There's a frequency overshoot and approximately 60 second decay back to the equilibrium value; this is the first indirect evidence for three components in the core. 3) There appears to be an anti-glitch, or frequency slow down, immediately before the glitch. We have no idea what that is, but speculate that it could be the cause of the glitch.
June 14, 2019: I'm extremely proud of Hayley Macpherson who today submitted her PhD 'Inhomogeneous cosmology in an anisotropic Universe'. Hayley has done an exceptional job with this thesis, so much so that she's off to Cambridge for a prize fellowship postdoc starting in October. It's been a fantastic experience having Hayley as a student, and I wish her all the best in her future endeavours.
June 12, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Ashton, Lasky, Graber, and Palfreyman Rotational evolution of the Vela pulsar during the 2016 glitch. Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy:
June 12, 2019: I am happy to announce that I've just rotated off being co-chair of the International Pulsar Timing Array Gravitational Wave Working Group. I leave the group in the very capable hands of my co-chairs Chiara Mingarelli and Steve Taylor, and my newly-appointed replacements Daniel Reardon and Siyuan Chen. It has been a pleasure working in this dynamic group that has made excellent progress towards the ultimate goal of detecting the first nanohertz gravitational waves.
May 29 - June 1, 2019: I'm at the annual Philippine Physics conference giving an invited, plenary talk entitled The Future of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy. The conference is the Samahang Pisika ng Piliinas: 37th SPP Physics Conference and Annual Meeting, in the beautiful Bohol Island in the Philippines.
May 24, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Sun, Melatos and Lasky Tracking continuous gravitational waves from a neutron star at once and twice the spin frequency with a hidden Markov model. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
May 13-17, 2019: I'm at pulsar timing inference workshop at Swinburne University this week, where I'm giving a general introduction to Bayesian inference.
May 1, 2019: I'm giving a colloquium at the University of Melbourne today entitle: 'The future of gravitational-wave astronomy'
April 29, 2019: I'm giving a talk to all of Year 5-12 at St. Leonards College today about the new gravitational-wave astronomy.
April 26, 2019: Well, perhaps it got even more exciting today. A gravitational-wave merger with non-zero (approximately 14%) chance of being a neutron star black hole merger! GW190426.
April 25, 2019: There have been a few gravitational-wave events already detected since the start of the third LIGO/Virgo observing run on April 1, but none as exciting as the one detected today. A possible binary neutron star merger. Keep your eye out for GW190425!
April 17, 2019: I'm giving an online presentation about gravitational waves and neutron stars today to the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India.
April 2-4, 2019: I'm at the fifth Australia-China Workshop on Astrophysics meeting this week in the beautiful Healesville, Victoria, where I am giving an invited talk entitled 'A matter machine - the science case for a high-frequency gravitational-wave observatory'
March 21, 2019: New paper submitted: Ashton, Lasky, Graber, and Palfreyman Internal neutron-star physics from the 2016 Vela glitch. Submitted to Nature Astronomy:
March 15, 2019: New paper submitted: Hernandez Vivanco, Smith, Thrane and Lasky Accelerated detection of the binary neutron star gravitational-wave background. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
March 12, 2019: New paper submitted: Sun, Melatos and Lasky Tracking continuous gravitational waves from a neutron star at once and twice the spin frequency with a hidden Markov model. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
March 9, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Abbott et al. Search for gravitational waves from a long-lived remnant of the binary neutron star merger GW170817. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb 26, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Macpherson, Price and Lasky Einstein's Universe: Cosmological structure formation in numerical relativity. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Feb 18-22, 2019: We're running a workshop at Monash this week for the LIGO parameter estimation group. This is a busy week to get various software, including Bilby ready for the upcoming LIGO/Virgo observing run.
Feb. 12, 2019: Paper accepted for publication: Ashton, Huebner, Lasky, Talbot et al. Bilby: A user-friendly Bayesian inference library for gravitational-wave astronomy. Accepted Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb 7, 2019: I am humbled that my old primary and high school, St Leonards College, has made me an ambassador for their new Inspiring Innovations project. This is a project to build fantastic new STEM and performing arts spaces on the School grounds.
Feb 7-8, 2019: I'm at the annual ANITA workshop for theoretical astrophysics which is being held at Swinburne. I'm giving a talk about what we know about the remnant of the binary neutron star merger GW170817.
Jan. 22, 2019: Tonight I gave a joint talk with Robert Ward at Science in the Pub on gravitational waves, LIGO, and quantum radiation pressure.
Jan. 21-23, 2019: I'm at the Australia National University in Canberra this week giving lectures on gravitational-wave astrophysics at the Canberra International Physics Summer School: The Invisible Universe.
Jan. 16, 2019: The Australian Federal Government today announced they will be giving $2 Million dollars over two years to create a gravitational-wave data centre - see the announcement from the Minister's office here.
Nov. 24, 2018: New paper submitted: Martynov et al. Exploring the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors to neutron star physics. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 7, 2019: An image from our recent paper on gravitational-wave memory has been selected by the editors of the Physical Review D journal as a feature on their Kaleidoscope website.
Jan. 3-8, 2019: I am in the beautiful Xiamen, China, this week for the Xiamen-CUSTIPEN workshop on the Equation of State of Dense Neutron-Rich Matter in the Era of Gravitational Wave Astronomy. I am giving an invited talk on determing the equation of state using observations of post-merger remnants.
Dec. 18, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky and Ashton X-ray afterglows of short gamma-ray bursts: Magnetar or Fireball?. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 16, 2018: I filmed an episode of the kids TV show Scope, which aired today on Channel Ten. The episode is all about different types of explosions, including those that occur when two neutron stars collide. It can be seen here on TenPlay; I appear at about the 10:50 mark.
Dec. 10-14, 2018: This week is the annual Australian Institute of Physics Congress at the University of Western Australia in Perth. I am delivering an invited plenary talk on the final day of the conference, titled 'New discoveries by LIGO during its first and second observing runs'. The talk is being co-delivered with Prof. Susan Scott from ANU; our powerpoint slides can be found here.
Dec. 5-9, 2018: I'm at the OzGrav Annual Retreat at the beautiful Vines resort in Perth this week.
Dec. 4, 2018: The LIGO collaboration has announced the full catalogue of binary mergers from the first and second observing runs. This includes the announcement of four binary black hole systems that had not previously been reported. The catalogue paper can be found here, and a paper on the system's population properties can be found here. A press release from Monash University can be found here, which includes a quote from me.
Nov. 24, 2018: I'm very proud of my PhD student Paul Easter who today submitted his first, first-author paper (see below). It's been a long road getting this one out the door, but it was certainly worth it. In short, Paul has trained a machine-learning algorithm on numerical relativity waveforms of binary neutron star mergers to create accurate gravitational-waveform spectra in a fraction of the usual cost. Congratulations, Paul!
Nov. 24, 2018: New paper submitted: Easter, Lasky, Casey, Rezzolla and Takami Computing fast and reliable gravitational waveforms of binary neutron star merger remnants. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 7, 2018: New paper submitted: Ashton, Huebner, Lasky, Talbot et al. Bilby: A user-friendly Bayesian inference library for gravitational-wave astronomy. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Supp. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 22, 2018: We've just announced a press release about my PhD student's new paper on 'The Trouble with Hubble'. Check out the Monash press release, or just read the paper.
June 15, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Lower, Thrane, Lasky and Smith Measuring eccentricity in binary black hole inspirals with gravitational waves. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 6, 2018: New paper submitted: Abbott et al. Search for gravitational waves from a long-lived remnant of the binary neutron star merger GW170817. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 5, 2018: My PhD student Hayley Macpherson's recent article on doing cosmology with numerical relativity just got a nice write up in AASNova. Check out the article here.
Oct. 2, 2018: Today we launched a new version of our parameter estimation code, Bilby. The code was recently re-branded; it includes significant documentation and examples that a user can follow if one is interested in doing astrophysical inference of gravitational-wave events. The code is even more adaptable than that, with significant examples being developed in time-domain astronomy. Keep an eye out for the paper to appear soon.
Sept. 27, 2018: I'm in Adelaide today for a meeting about dedicated high frequency gravitational-wave instruments, including their potential science case and design.
Sept. 25, 2018: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky and Ashton X-ray afterglows of short gamma-ray bursts: Magnetar or Fireball?. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett.
Sept. 7, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Macpherson, Lasky and Price The trouble with Hubble: Local versus global expansion rates in inhomogeneous cosmological simulations with numerical relativity. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
August 27, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Talbot, Thrane, Lasky, and Lin Gravitational-wave memory: waveforms and phenomenology. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
August 22, 2018: I was on ABC 774 radio today for an hour today talking about gravitational waves with Jon Faine, Alicia Sometimes, and Carl Knox - check out the full recording of the show here.
August 15, 2018: As part of National Science Week, I was today at Quantum Victoria, speaking to more than 100 high school students about astrophysics and careers in science.
August 7-10, 2018: I've been invited to the Fourth Meeting on the 'Physics and Astrophysics at the eXtreme' (PAX-IV) at IUCAA in Pune, India. The conference does not have usual conference talks, but instead all sessions are panel sessions. I'm leading a panel on extreme matter, focussing primarily on measuring the equation of state with neutron stars using both gravitational waves and electromagnetic observations.
August 6, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Woan, Pitkin, Haskell, Jones, and Lasky Evidence for a minimum ellipticity in millisecond pulsars. accepted Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
July 31, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Sarin, Lasky, Sammut and Ashton An x-ray guided gravitational-wave search for binary neutron star merger remnants. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
July 24, 2018: Paper accepted for publication: Zhu, Thrane, Oslowski, Levin and Lasky Inferring the populsation properties of binary neutron stars with gravitational-wave measurements of spin. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
July 16-18, 2018: We're running a workshop on inference this week at Monash and as part of OzGrav.
July 3, 2018: New paper submitted: Talbot, Thrane, Lasky, and Lin Gravitational-wave memory: waveforms and phenomenology. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 29, 2018: Congratulations to my PhD student Nikhil Sarin for winning second prize in the student talk competition at the ASA conference.
June 28, 2018: Congratulations to my PhD student Hayley Macpherson for winning the Monash Faculty of Science Young Science Leader Award.
June 25-29, 2018: This week is the Annual Astronomical Society of Australia Conference at Swinburne University, for which I am on the Scientific Organising Committee.
June 21, 2018: Tonight I am giving a public talk to the Victorian branch of the Australian Academy of Sciences for their New Fellows' and Prize Winners' Symposium.
June 20, 2018: New paper submitted: Macpherson, Price and Lasky Einstein's Universe: Cosmological structure formation in numerical relativity. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 20, 2018: New paper submitted: Macpherson, Lasky and Price The trouble with Hubble: Local versus global expansion rates in inhomogeneous cosmological simulations with numerical relativity. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 15, 2018: New paper submitted: Lower, Thrane, Lasky and Smith Measuring eccentricity in binary black hole inspirals with gravitational waves. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
June 8, 2018: New paper submitted: Woan, Pitkin, Haskell, Jones, and Lasky Evidence for a minimum ellipticity in millisecond pulsars. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
May 22-24, 2018: This week I'm in Canberra for the annual Science at the Shine Dome run by the Australian Academy of Sciences, where I was extremely honoured to be awarded the Academy's Pawsey Medal.
May 12, 2018: Fantastic to see the opening of a new, permanent exhibit at Scienceworks called Beyond perception: Seeing the Unseen. I've contributed to some of the interesting stuff about gravitational waves; check out some of their online resources here, which include some of my contributions.
May 3, 2018: I'm very proud of my PhD student Nikhil Sarin who today submitted his first paper (see details below). Nikhil started this work in his honours year near the beginning of 2017, and it's great to see the final product come to fruition. Looking forward to many more excellent papers from Nikhil.
May 3, 2018: New paper submitted: Sarin, Lasky, Sammut and Ashton An x-ray guided gravitational-wave search for binary neutron star merger remnants. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
May 3, 2018: I talked to the grade 3s at St. Leonards College today about the size of the Solar System, the size of the Universe, supernova explosions and black holes!
April 27, 2018: I have just been named as the Programme Chair of the Relativistic Astrophysics Group within the OzGRav Centre of Excellence.
April 16-20, 2018: I'm at the Institute for Nuclear Theory, in Seattle, Washington this week where I'm giving an invited talk for the Astro-Solids, Dense Matter, and Gravitational Waves Workshop. My talk is on neutron star merger remnants, models for their gravitational-wave emission and prospects for detection.
April 5-6, 2018: I'm at the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Australia Consortium Workshop giving an invited talk about gravitational-wave astronomy and the CTA.
March 28, 2018: I gave a talk today on the OzGrav third-generator telecon giving an astrophysical science case for dedicated, high-frequency gravitational-wave detectors.
March 2, 2018: I have been elected to the position of the co-Chair of the International Pulsar Timing Array Data Analysis Working Group. This is the beginning of the IPTAs restructuring, whereby all science is done through various working group. I was part of the team that drove the development of this new structure.
Feb. 26, 2018: Welcome to all the new first-year physics students at Monash University! Today we had our first class for the subject I am lecturing and coordinating, PHS1011: Classical Physics and Relativity.
Feb. 13/14, 2018: I'm at the New Zealand Square Kilometre Array Forum today in Auckland giving an invited talk on the gravitational-wave stochastic background, and the potential for the SKA to do this amazing science.
Feb. 8, 2018: Today is the first day of the ANITA Workshop in Perth. I gave a talk on gravitational waves in the aftermath of neutron star mergers.
Feb. 5-7, 2018: This week I am attending the ANITA Summer School and Workshop in Perth. I have organsied and am coordinating the Summer School, which sees an excellent array of speakers on gravitational-wave science, from LIGO data analysis and instrumentation, to gravitational-wave astrophysics and pulsar timing arrays.
Feb. 2, 2018: I'm at an OzGrav astrophysics planning day to converge on large-scale projects that can be tackled by the collaboration over the next few years.
Jan. 18 and 19, 2018: Welcome to all new undergraduate students at Monash! In my role as first-year physics coordinator, today and tomorrow I'm talking to all new enrollees about opportunities to study physics and astronomy at Monash University.
Jan. 17, 2018: This morning I gave a talk about gravitational waves to students from the MySci Student Experience; talented year 11 and 12 students learning about many different aspects of science in a three-day workshop run at Monash University.
Dec. 28, 2017: I've been quoted in this fantastic article about using pulsars to detect gravitational waves, written by Renee James in the magazine Astronomy.
Dec. 13, 2017: Congratulations to my honours student Nikhil Sarin who was awarded the best astrophysics honours student at Monash this year. A well-deserved award to cap off an excellent year. Nikhil has also been awarded a scholarship to do a Phd, which he will start early next year.
Dec. 5, 2017: I gave a plenary talk at the Australian Institute of Physics Summer Meeting at the University of New South Wales today. My talk was 'The new era of gravitational-wave astronomy: Current detections and future prospects'.
Nov. 28, 2017: I have been involved in a research study about effective feedback practices for undergraduate teaching. Our particular case study can be found here, including a nice video of Theo Hughes and myself talking about our feedback practices for first-year physics. The full study can be found at this website, and a short write-up can be seen on The Conversation.
Nov. 28, 2017: New paper submitted: Zhu, Thrane, Oslowski, Levin and Lasky Inferring the populsation properties of binary neutron stars with gravitational-wave measurements of spin. Submitted to Phys. Rev. X Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 23, 2017: I am advertising for a postdoc!! Come and work on gravitational-wave science with me in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash. Be associated with the amazing OzGrav Centre of Excellence across six universities in Australia! Check out the job details here, and don't hesitate to send me an email if you've got any questions at all!
Nov. 17, 2017: I am very proud to be announced as the 2018 Pawsey Medalist from the Australian Academy of Sciences today. The Monash press release is here.
Nov. 15, 2017: My PhD student, Hayley Macpherson, features in a news article on ScienceNews.org -- check it out!
Nov. 14, 2017: Paper accepted for publication: Search for post-merger gravitational waves from the remnant of the binary neutron star merger GW170817. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Nov. 13, 2017: My Australian Research Council grant was featured as one of the highlights of a successful round for the Faculty of Science at Monash. Read the press release here.
Nov. 10, 2017: The Australian Research Council today announced that they are funding my Discovery Project research grant, giving me more than $238 k for the next three years. The grant is to study strong-field gravity effects using observations of gravitational waves from colliding black holes. The grant will allow me to hire a postdoc working on this project -- advertisement to appear soon! Contact me if you're interested.
Nov. 8, 2017: Our research on using black holes to test the no-hair theorem was featured in Astrobites today.
Nov. 8, 2017: Congratulations to my four honours students who have today submitted their final theses. All four have done an amazing job, and shuold be incredibly proud of their achievement.
Nov. 8-10, 2017: I am attending the innaugural OzGRav retreat at Swinburne University this week, discussing all of the exciting new science we are going to be doing with gravitational waves in Australia for the next seven years.
Nov. 6, 2017: I was featured in a new Monash website about scientists at the University called lens - read the full story here.
Oct 27, 2017: Paper accepted for publication: Challenges testing the no-hair theorem with gravitational waves. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Oct. 26, 2017: Proud to have been part of the paper-writing team for the latest LIGO-Virgo Collaboration paper searching for gravitational waves being emitted from a purpoted neutron star remnant of the binary neutron star collision GW170817. The arXiv version of the paper can be found here.
Oct. 25, 2017: Eric Thrane and I gave a public lecture at Monash University on the new gravitational-wave discovery. The full lecture (including some parts that are re-enactments) can be seen here.
Oct. 24, 2017: Eric Thrane and I gave the School of Physics and Astronomy colloquium at Monash today about the new gravitational-wave discovery GW170817. The lecture can be seen here.
Oct. 18, 2017: I gave an invited plenary talk today at the IAU Symposium on Gravitational-wave Astrophysics in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My talk was on stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds including those in the pulsar timing array band as well as the LIGO band.
Oct. 17, 2017: I gave an invited seminar at Louisiana State University (LSU) today in Baton Rouge on the recent gravitational-wave detection of a binary neutron star (GW170817), and expectations for the post-merger remnant of this object.
Oct. 17, 2017: I was profiled as part of an ongoing Monash interview series of researchers. The full interview can be read here.
Oct. 16, 2017: So proud to be part of the LIGO collaboration that just announced the first detection of a binary neutron star merger. The inspiral phase of the merger was first seen in gravitational waves by LIGO. The electromagnetic emission was subsequently seen in gamma rays, x rays, UV, optical, infrared and radio waves! Check out the Monash press release, or an article that appeared in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald that includes many quotes from me.
Oct. 11, 2017: Eric Thrane and I appeared in The Australian newspaper today in a story about the recent Nobel Prize and our involvement in the discovery.
Oct. 4, 2017: Monash University has published its own press release about the Nobel Prize announcement, including a couple of quotes from me.
Oct. 3, 2017: Eric Thrane, Yuri Levin and I wrote an article for The Conversation about tonights Nobel Prize announcement.
Oct. 3, 2017: Rai Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics today for their seminal work laying the groundwork towards the first detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. I'm extremely proud to be part of this amazing collaboration and to be contributing to this new field of discovery.
Sept. 23, 2017: I presented at the annual AstroLight Festival at Scienceworks tonight to a packed house on 'Gravitational Waves: A New Window on the Universe'
Aug 21, 2017: Speed date a scientist!! I did an outreach event with eight secondary schools from around Victoria today at Quantum Victoria
Aug 18, 2017: Today I visited Harrisfield Primary School today to discuss everything about the Universe, and what it's like being an astrophysicist.
Aug 15, 2017: I'm teaching today at the 2017 Asian-Pacific School on Gravitation and Cosmology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. I am teaching the ~50 postgraduate students all about Pulsar Timing Array science.
Aug 13-14, 2017: I'm in Hong Kong speaking about LIGO and gravitational waves at a STEM outreach event for local high-school students and teachers.
Aug 6, 2017: Today was Open Day for Monash University; a chance to showcase both our research and teaching highlights thoughout the School. I gave a popular-level science talk about the detection of gravitational waves, and also interacted with potential new students in both the PACE environment, and with some formal course advice.
Aug 3, 2017: I just gave an online talk about gravitational waves to some students from Texas who are visiting Sydney for a couple weeks.
July 14, 2017: I'm at the Annual Astronomical Society of Australia conference this week. Today I am giving a talk about gravitational-wave spectroscopy using binary black hole mergers.
Jun 28, 2017: I'm visiting the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Unit in Marsfiled, Sydney today, where I gave a talk entitiled 'Gravitational wave astronomy in the age of multiple detections'
June 16, 2017: New paper submitted: Thrane, Lasky, and Levin Challenges testing the no-hair theorem with gravitational waves. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
June 14, 2017: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky, Leris, Rowlinson, and Glampedakis The braking index of millisecond magnetars. accepted Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
Jun 14, 2017: The podcast we recorded for Stuart Gary's StarStuff is now live! Listen from about the five-minute mark.
Jun 7, 2017: Just did a pre-recorded radio interview with Lucy McNeill and Eric Thrane about our recent gravitational-wave orphan memory paper for the popular podcast SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.
Jun 2, 2017: The LIGO Scientific Collaboration has announced the discovery of a new binary black hole merger, GW170104, in a paper in Physical Review Letters. Along with Matthew Bailes and Eric Thrane, I have written an article about the new discovery for The Conversation.
May 29, 2017: New paper submitted: Lasky, Leris, Rowlinson, and Glampedakis The braking index of millisecond magnetars. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
May 23, 2017: Our PRL has been picked up by a number of different news outlets. Some reputable, some not. The Physical Review provides a nice website where one can keep track of media coverage. Check it out!
May 22, 2017: Another article, this time in ScienceAlert, about our new paper. Lots of direct quotes from me this time!
May 20, 2017: There was an article today in New Scientist about our recent PRL on orphan gravitational-wave memory.
May 5, 2017: Our new paper in Physical Review Letters was published today! Here we show that gravitational-wave memory can be used to effectively extend LIGOs observing band to arbitrarily high gravitational-wave frequencies. This work was published with Eric Thrane and our former honours student Lucy McNeill.
April 15, 2017: Paper accepted for publication: McNeill, Thrane, and Lasky Detecting gravitational wave memory without parent signals. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
March 27-31, 2017: This week I am in Warsaw, Poland, for the annual NewCompStar conference. I gave an invited, plenary talk on the first day of the conference about gravitational waves from newly born neutron stars.
March 24, 2017: I was quoted in an article about pulsar astronomy for the popular science magazine 'astronomy'.
March 3-4, 2017: I'm in Adelaide for a OzGrav retreat discussing the future of gravitational wave science in Australia.
February 21, 2017: I am advertising a position as an Assisstant Lecturer in Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics! The position is for three years in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University. Interested candidates working in any area of gravitational-wave astrophysics, data analysis, high-energy astrophysics, etc., should go here for more details.
February 10, 2017: I'm at the annual ANITA workshop at the University of Tasmania today, where I am presenting a talk on gravitational-wave memory, and the potential to measure the effect with Advanced LIGO.
February 7, 2017: New paper submitted: McNeill, Thrane, and Lasky Gravitational Waves from Orphan Memory. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
December 9, 2016: I'm giving an online talk to the Virtual Institute of Astroparticle Physics tonight about the possiblity of detecting gravitational-wave memory with Advanced LIGO
November 18, 2016: New paper submitted: Macpherson, Lasky, and Price Inhomogeneous Cosmology with Numerical Relativity. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
November 7, 2016: I was awarded a Young Tall Poppy Science Award from the Australian Institute of Policy and Science. The Tall Poppy Awards recognises both scientific achievements as well as leadership potential and contributions to public outreach.
November 1, 2016: I was awarded a Future Fellowship by the Australian Research Council which provides funding for the next four years. My project is worth $652,000, and is entitled 'extreme astrophysics in the age of gravitational waves' The official project abstract reads: This project aims to probe the most catastrophic explosions in the universe. It will use gravitational wave astronomy to detect an exotic effect that causes space to permanently deform following cataclysmic events, determine the origin of binary black holes by measuring statistical properties of many mergers, and use observations of colliding neutron stars to understand the physics of the biggest explosions in the Universe. This project will lay the framework for the next decade of the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy.
October 14, 2016: The PBS Nova article was requoted in a number of places, including in a nice article on hacked.com
October 13, 2016: I was interviewed for an article on PBS Nova. The article is a great introduction to our paper on detecting gravitational-wave memory with ensembles of binary black holes observed with Advanced LIGO.
October 3, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Sun, Melatos, Lasky, Chung, and Darman Cross-correlation search for continuous gravitational waves from a compact object in SNR 1987A in LIGO Science Run 5. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
September 17/18, 2016: I was a panelist on the RRR Party Show (between the civilised hours of 12 and 2am on Saturday night) talking about all things science, including the obligatory discussions about gravitational waves, black holes, and physics education. The podcast will eventually be available through this link.
September 5-9, 2016: I'm at a conference in the beautiful St. Petersburg this week, where I am giving an invited talk about LIGO and gravitational-wave memory. Slides for my talk (minus the fancy animations) can be found here.
August 19, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Glampedakis and Lasky The freedom to chosse neutron star magnetic field equilibria. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
August 6, 2016: Our paper about our ability to detect gravitational-wave memory with LIGO was published today as an 'editor's suggestion' in Physical Review Letters. Free online access can be found on the arXiv.
July 25, 2016: Today is the first day of semester two at Monash. I am coordinating and teaching into the first-year physics unit PHS1022: Fields and Quantum Physics.
July 20, 2016: New paper submitted: Glampedakis and Lasky The freedom to choose neutron star magnetic field equilibria. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
July 16 and 17 , 2016: I had the immense privelege of being invited to the Central West Astronomical Society AstroFest this weekend in Parkes, NSW, where I gave a talk about gravitational-wave astronomy. The event included the David Malin Astrophotography Award ceremony, and the opening of a new astrophotography exhibit at the Parkes Radio Telescope Visitor centre.
July 14 , 2016: I was on ABCs Central West radio today advertising the upcoming Central West AstroFest, to be held at the Parkes radio telescope this coming weekend, where I am an invited speaker.
July 13 , 2016: I visited Bentleigh Secondary College today to talk to the year 8 and year 11 students about black holes, gravitational waves and careers in physics.
July 12, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky, Thrane, Levin, Blackman and Chen Detecting gravitational-wave memory with LIGO: implications of GW150914. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
July 4 - 8 , 2016: I'm at the Annual General Meeting of the Astronomical Society of Australia in Sydney this week. On Friday I'll be presenting our work on detecting gravitational-wave memory using Advanced LIGO.
July 1, 2016: I have accepted a new position at Monash University's School of Physics and Astronomy as a Lecturer. I will be coordinating first-year physics in the School as well as continuing to develop my own research profile.
June 21, 2016: This evening I appeared on Joy FM's radio show 'Is Nothing Sacred', to talk about space, gravitational waves, gravitational-wave memory, black holes, and wormholes.
June 21, 2016: I visited the grade 3's at St. Leonards College today to tell them about giant explosions in space!
June 16, 2016: We detected more gravitational waves! Here is a link to the new LIGO paper describing the second ever observation of a binary black hole merger, and here is a link to a piece I've written for The Conversation. I also appeared on radio (774, drive show with Raf Epstein) this afternoon to discuss the new gravitational-wave discovery. Here is a link to the programme, my section starts at 19 minutes into the show
May 27, 2016: Today was my last lecture for the third-year course ASP3051: 'Special Relativity, General Relativity and Cosmology'. Good luck to all for the upcoming exam!
May 24, 2016: Today was the Monash School of Physics and Astronomy Equity and Diversity Workshop. I gave a talk on 'Gender roles, academic life and society', which included a small Bayesian calculation.
May 18, 2016: Today presented our new paper on gravitational-wave memory to the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array collaboratin.
May 6, 2016: New paper submitted: Lasky, Thrane, Levin, Blackman and Chen Detecting gravitational-wave memory with LIGO: implications of GW150914. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
April 23 - 30, 2016: I'm travelling to Istanbul this week for the Annual NewCompstar conference, where I'll be presenting a plenary talk titled 'Inferring properties of the central engine of short gamma-ray bursts'
April 13, 2016: New paper submitted: Sun, Melatos, Lasky, Chung and Darman Cross-correlation search for continuous gravitational waves from a compact object in SNR 1987A in LIGO Science Run 5. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D
April 1, 2016: My article on detecting gravitational waves from inflation was published in the journal Physical Review X today. It made the front page of the journal, and there's a nice write-up of the article here. The article itself is open access, and can be read here.
March 23, 2016: I gave a talk about LIGO, gravitational waves and gravitational-wave memory at the University of Melbourne today.
March 14 - 18, 2016: I'm in Pasadena, California this week for a LIGO-Virgo conference.
March 11, 2016: Our paper was on detecting binary black holes with Pulsar Timing Arrays throughout the Universe was published today in Physical Review Letters - check it out here!!
March 11, 2016: I gave two talks today. The first, entitled 'Detecting gravitational-wave memory with LIGO: implications of GW150914', was to the Testing General Relativity group within the LIGO-Virgo collaboration. The second was an invited presentation about the recent LIGO result at Curtin University in Perth.
March 4, 2016: I was interviewed today about binary black holes and the potential gamma-ray observation that is connected to the gravitational-wave detection. Read the article here at news.com
March 1, 2016: Another talk today at the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) on gravitational waves.
February 29, 2016: I gave a talk about gravitational waves to a packed house at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.
February 27, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky, Mingarelli, Smith, Thrane, et al. Gravitational-wave cosmology across 29 decades in frequency. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. X Check it out on the arXiv
February 22, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky and Glampedakis Observationally constraining gravitational wave emission from short gamma-ray burst remnants. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
February 22, 2016: I gave a talk today about gravitational waves at the Workshop on Analysis, Geometry and Mathematical Relativity.
February 18, 2016: I gave the astrophysics colloquium to the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing today about the new gravitational wave discovery.
February 17, 2016: Paper accepted for publication: Rosado, Lasky, Thrane, Zhu, Mandel, and Sesana Detectability of gravitational waves from high-redshift binaries. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
February 17, 2016: Another busy day: I presented two talks to the Gaseous Electronics Meeting at Deakin University. One talk was entitled 'The direct detection of gravitational waves with LIGO', and the second was 'Neutron star cores: the most exotic plasmas in the Universe'. I also presented the new gravitational wave discovery to the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array via a teleconference.
February 12, 2016: We discovered gravitational waves!!! It's amazing to be part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration that has announced today the first direct detection of gravitational waves that has come from a binary black hole merger. Today was a busy day; among other things, Eric Thrane and I appeared in a YouTube video about the new detection, Letizia Sammut and I wrote an article for The Conversation about Australia's contributions to the LIGO discovery, and I presented the gravitational wave discovery to the ANITA meeting.
February 8 - 12, 2016: I am co-organising the 10th Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics Summer School and Conference at Monash University this week. We have an amazing array of talks at the conference - check out the programme here
January 22, 2016: New paper submitted: Ravi and Lasky A neutron star progenitor for FRBs? Insights from polarisation measurements. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
January 1, 2016: I have been elected to the Steering Committees of both the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) and the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA). The latter is the consortium of consortia that comprises the three Pulsar Timing Array's around the world.
December 21, 2015: My review article: Gravitational Waves from Neutron is Stars: A Review has been selected as one of the 2015 highlights from the journal PASA.
December 17, 2015: New paper submitted: Lasky and Glampedakis Observationally constraining gravitational wave emission from short gamma-ray burst remnants. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
December 16, 2015: New paper submitted: Rosado, Lasky, Thrane, Zhu, Mandel, and Sesana The most distant observable massive objects. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett. Check it out on the arXiv
December 8, 2015: I taught at the International Student Science Fair at the John Monash Science School today. This involved teaching General Relativity to students in grades 7 to 9.
December 2-4, 2015: We are hosting the 8th Australasian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (ACGRG8) at Monash University. We have an excellent line up of speakers, and a great programme! I also gave a talk on gravitational waves.
November 25, 2015: Today was the centenary of Einstein's General Relativity! This day, 100 years ago, Albert Einstein presented 'Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation' (the field equations of gravity) to the Prussian Academy in Berlin. To celebrate this milestone, I gave a public lecture in Geelong entitled 'Einstein's Legacy: General Relativity Turns 100'. A copy of my slides (minus the fancy movies) for this talk can be found here.
November 12, 2015: I gave a talk tonight about the centenary of Einstein's theory of General Relativity to a packed house at the Astronomical Society of Australia general meeting in the Herbarium of the Botanical Gardens of Victoria -- all scientific discussion's should be held in such a nice venue!
November 11, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Howell, Rowlinson, Coward, Lasky et al. Hunting gravitational waves with multi-messenger counterparts: Australia's role. Invited review, accepted to PASA as part of a special issue on Gravitational Wave Astronomy. Check it out on the arXiv
November 7, 2015: The interview with Robyn Williams and Eric Thrane aired today on ABC Radio National's Science Show. Eric and I sung on national radio -- click here for a podcast of this not-to-be-missed episode.
November 3, 2015: I gave another telecon talk to the LIGO stochastic group today about the recent Parkes Pulsar Timing Array Science paper. Click here to see the slides.
October 14, 2015: New paper submitted: Lasky, Mingarelli, Smith, Thrane, et al. Gravitational-wave cosmology across 29 decades in frequency. Phys. Rev. X Check it out on the arXiv
October 14, 2015: Another day, another radio interview. Eric Thrane and I were interviewed by Robyn Williams for ABC Radio National's Science Show. The interview was recorded, and will be aired in the next month or two.
October 4, 2015: I was on the radio today talking about supermassive black holes, gravitational waves and pulsars! The radio programme was Einstein-a-go-go on 3RRR - listen to the interview here; I come in at the 33 minute mark. Enjoy...
September 29, 2015: My invited review article was published today! Check it out here! If you can't get through the paywall, you can read it on the arXiv here
September 25, 2015: As part of the PPTA, we've published an article in the journal Science today. I've also written a popular account of this for The Conversation - check it out!
September 25, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Shannon, Ravi, Lentati, Lasky et al. Gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes missing in pulsar observations. Science
September 25, 2015: New paper submitted: Howell, Rowlinson, Coward, Lasky et al. Hunting gravitational waves with multi-messenger counterparts: Australia's role. Invited review, submitted for publication to PASA as part of a special issue on Gravitational Wave Astronomy.
September 22, 2015: I'm offering honours projects for 2016!! If you're interested in working on cutting edge research associated with the exciting, emerging field of gravitational wave astronomy, then send me an email. I have a number of formal projects being offered (see this webpage). If anything else about gravitational wave astrophysics interests you, then please don't hesitate to get in touch!
September 17, 2015: I gave a talk today to the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing on Gravitational Wave Astrophysics.
September 15, 2015: I gave a telecon talk to the LIGO stochastic group about constraining models of inflation by combining gravitational wave experiments over 29 orders of magnitude in frequency. Click here to see the slides.
September 10, 2015: Today I gave a telecon talk to the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational-wave Astronomy (ACIGA) about the recent results from the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array. Click here to see the slides.
September 9, 2015: I visited Rosehill Secondary College today to talk abuot the life-cycle of Stars, neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves.
September 1, 2015: I am offering Summer Research Projects on various gravitational wave projects. Information about projects can be found here. If you're interested in anything else related to gravitational waves, neutron stars, or anything else you think I might work on, please don't hesitate to send me an email!
August 28, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars: A Review. Invited review, accepted for publication in PASA as part of a special issue on Gravitational Wave Astronomy. Check it out on the arXiv
August 21, 2015: I visited Harrisfield Primary School for their night as part National Science Week. I spoke to the grade 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s about the size of the Universe and the life-cycle of Stars. We also has an observing session at night where the kids were able to clearly see Saturn and craters on the moon.
July 27 - 31, 2015: I attended the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) conference in Leura, Sydney, and gave a talk about red timing noise in millisecond pulsars, and how this effects gravitational wave detection.
July 9, 2015: I gave an invited talk today at the Compact Stars and Black Holes meeting in Tuebingen, Germany about short gamma-ray bursts and gravitational waves. A pdf of my talk can be found here
July 6, 2015: I gave an invited talk today at the Astronomical Society of Australia's Annual Meeting in Perth about generating and detecting gravitational waves from neutron stars. A pdf of my talk can be found here
June 6, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Messenger et al. Gravitational waves from Sco X-1: A comparison of search methods and prospects for detection with advanced detectors. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
May 25, 2015: I'm in Aspen, Colorado at the Aspen Center for Physics for a month-long workshop on Pulsar Timing Array science
April 23, 2015: New paper submitted: Messenger et al. Gravitational waves from Sco X-1: A comparison of search methods and prospects for detection with advanced detectors. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
March 31, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Haskell, Priymak, Patruno, Oppenoorth, Melatos and Lasky Detecting gravitational waves from mountains on neutron stars in the Advanced Detector Era. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
March 24, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Glampedakis and Lasky Persistent crust-core spin lag in neutron stars. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
March 24, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Lü, Zhang, Lei, Li and Lasky The millisecond magnetar central engine in short GRBs. Accepted for publication in Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
March 23, 2015: I've been elected to the Steering Committee of the Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (ANITA)
March 18, 2015: I gave a talk today at the University of Melbourne about the interior dynamics of neutron stars and their relationship to electromagnetic and gravitational wave observations. A pdf of my talk can be found here
March 12, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Lasky, Melatos, Ravi and Hobbs Pulsar timing noise and the minimum observation time to detect gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays. Accepted for publication in Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 24, 2015: I've been quoted in The Age newspaper discussing the recent BICEP2 non-result.
Feb. 20, 2015: Paper accepted for publication: Aasi et al. (The LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaborations) A directed search for gravitational waves from Scorpius X-1 with initial LIGO. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D Check it out on the arXiv
Feb. 09 - 10, 2015: Conference: ANITA workshop, Neutron star magnetic fields and rotational dynamics (pdf)
Jan. 30, 2015: My first observing session with Parkes and the PPTA!!
Jan. 28 - 30, 2015: Visiting the ATNF in Sydney
Jan. 24, 2015: New paper submitted: Haskell, Priymak, Patruno, Oppenoorth, Melatos and Lasky Detecting gravitational waves from mountains on neutron stars in the Advanced Detector Era. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 22, 2015: New paper submitted: Glampedakis and Lasky Persistent crust-core spin lag in neutron stars. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. Check it out on the arXiv
Jan. 12, 2015: New paper submitted: Lü, Zhang, Lei, Li and Lasky The millisecond magnetar central engine in short GRBs. Submitted to Astrophys. J. Check it out on the arXiv
Dec. 7, 2014: New paper submitted: Lasky, Melatos, Ravi and Hobbs Pulsar timing noise and the minimum observation time to detect gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays. Submitted to Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.
Nov. 1, 2014: Started postdoctoral fellowship with Yuri Levin in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University.