Talks

Gravitational wave observations have unveiled the population of merging black holes and neutron stars, providing direct access to strong-field gravity and dense nuclear matter. These compact binaries emit gravitational radiation as they inspiral and merge, producing waveforms that encode: the masses and spins of the constituents, neutron star's equation of state, the properties of gravity in extreme regimes, and details of their astrophysical environments. Extracting this information requires precise theoretical predictions for comparison with observations. Next-generation detectors, both ground and space-based, are expected to observe 10^3-10^5+ cycles of a given binary merger, with potentially many thousands of events per year across disparate regimes of masses, eccentricities, etc. At this scale, numerical relativity simulations alone become computationally prohibitive, making precision analytical calculations essential.

In this talk I will present new analytical approaches to the gravitational two-body problem that combine effective field theory techniques from particle physics together with tools from General Relativity. I will discuss methods for computing the dynamics of isolated binaries at high perturbative orders, as well as methods for describing binaries embedded in gaseous or dark matter environments where environmental effects modify the orbital evolution and gravitational wave signal.

Quantum guessing games provide a framework for analyzing how information encoded in quantum states can be optimally extracted through measurement. Beyond the standard role of side information, we introduce the concept of metainformation: knowledge that further side information of a certain type will later become available, even if it is not yet revealed. This distinction uncovers a finer structure in the interplay between timing, information, and strategy, and shows that metainformation can, in some scenarios, raise success probabilities to match those achievable with prior side information. Metainformation connects directly to two applications: the detection of quantum incompatibility and parallel hybrid computation. This talk outlines the basic framework of metainformation and reviews these applications.