Johan Samsing: Probing the origin of Black Hole Binary Mergers

Tuesday 26 May 2026, 13:15 → 14:00 Europe/Stockholm

FB54 (AlbaNova Main Building)

The field of gravitational wave physics and black hole physics has undergone a tremendous transformation over the past decade. So far, about 200 mergers of compact objects have been seen through gravitational waves, but how and where these compact binaries form remain outstanding key questions. I will show several novel approaches on how to probe the origin of these sources, both on a population level and for individual events. I will bring in new ideas related to phaseshifts and strong lensing, and discuss the prospects in the era of LIGO, but also comment on how LISA and the Einstein Telescope will soon revolutionise this field.

About the speaker: Johan Samsing is an Assistant Professor in Theoretical Astrophysics at the university of Copenhagen. He joined the NBIA as a Louis-Hansen Assistant Professor and Marie Curie Fellow in 2019. In 2020 he received a Villum Young Investigator Grant to establish a group at the NBIA dedicated to gravitational-wave astrophysics. Johan received his PhD from the Niels Bohr Institute (DARK) in 2014, after which he moved to Princeton University, first as an Einstein Fellow and then as a Spitzer Fellow. He currently works on the astrophysical formation of gravitational-wave sources and the origin of black hole mergers.

In the OKC: SU-astro corridor, AlbaNova floor 6