Time-Domain & Multi-Messenger Astronomy

One sky, many messengers

Astronomy no longer watches a still sky. Surveys like ZTF and the upcoming Rubin LSST catch the universe changing night by night, while gravitational-wave detectors listen to it through an entirely different messenger. Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger Astronomy (TDMMA) is where those signals meet. The time domain is this workshop's centre of gravity — the changing sky, and everything we learn by watching it change — with the other messengers entering as the sky's most violent events demand them.

The visiting lecturer for the week is Dr. Andrew L. Miller — assistant professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific (ICTP-AP, UCAS Beijing) and a member of the LIGO/Virgo collaboration — who comes to CASSA for the gravitational-wave portion of the programme. He is joined by Prof. M Arshad Momen, a theoretical physicist at IUB working on quantum field theory, gravitation and particle physics, who takes the programme's high-energy neutrino astrophysics session; Dr. Syed Ashraf Uddin, a supernova cosmologist who uses Type Ia supernovae as standard candles to probe dark energy and the Hubble tension, formerly of the Carnegie Supernova Project and a member of the Dark Energy Survey; Dr. Jewel Kumar Ghosh, a theoretical physicist at IUB working on string theory and gravity, who brings the theory of black holes and compact objects to the gravitational-wave sessions; and Dr. Khan Muhammad Bin Asad on the radio time domain — pulsars and fast radio bursts with MeerKAT and LOFAR. Session speakers and further facilitators will be announced before the workshop.

The goal is capacity building: participants leave able to read a transient light curve, follow a gravitational-wave alert, and start research in time-domain astronomy and the multi-messenger science that grows out of it.