Tag: workshop

The Madrid Winter Workshop on Gravitational Physics 2026 (MWWGP-2026) is the seventh in a series of Workshops intended to bring together researchers with common interests on the geometric structure of space-time, quantum properties of gravity, modified theories of gravity, cosmology, and astrophysics, and who collaborate or can potentially collaborate among each other via active projects. It will take place on December 14-16th, 2026. This workshop oscillates between Valencia and Madrid, this time being hosted by the Departament of Theoretical Physics and the Instituto de Particulas y Fisica del Cosmos (IPARCOS) of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

The idea of the Workshop is to encourage everyone, from seniors to less-experienced students and postdocs, to present some results obtained during the last year that they find particularly relevant/interesting/easy to discuss in a relaxed atmosphere, possibly using the pdf of a paper already on arXiv or some scanned handwritten notes of a current work in progress, and addressing a few simple questions:

• What is it about?.
• Why is it important? (An explanation of what is unique and/or timely about this topic and the difference it might make with respect to previous work).
• Perspectives.

The contributions are encouraged to be conceptual presentations with minimal calculations (if possible). The subsequent discussion and questions could extend as much as needed, depending on the audience’s participation. All non-essential calculations could be provided to those interested for their individual analysis. The idea is to have talks not too focused on technicalities (if the topic allows, obviously) but have more discussions which could lead to new works/collaborations in the years to come.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is November 15th and for the registration November 25th.

Workshop Website

The Open Quantum Universe Workshop at The Pennsylvania State University, supported by the Gravity Theory Trust, will be a focused event that aims to coordinate and stimulate significant recent interest in the understanding of cosmology as an open, out-of-equilibrium, quantum system. While these properties are clearly implied by the presence of an observer-dependent horizon and dynamical expansion, they are not naturally accommodated by the current theoretical frameworks for cosmology. The same properties are also at the core of condensed-matter physics and quantum information science. The goal of this workshop is to gather leading contributors to these topics from the cosmological side in order to address foundational questions in cosmology, and to foster cross-disciplinary connections by building on current local initiatives at Penn State that include condensed-matter theorists.

November 17-20, 2026

Location:
Penn State University
University Park, PA

Workshop Website

The Department of Physics of the University of Pisa, the INFN-Pisa and the Vanderbilt Lunar Lab Initiative cordially invite the scientific community to the 2026 International LILA Meeting (Lunar Gravitational-Wave Workshop), taking place from 2 to 4 December 2026. 

As the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA network continues to detect gravitational-wave signals at an unprecedented rate, plans for next-generation detectors are rapidly advancing, including ground-based observatories like the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer as well as spaceborne mission LISA. In the meantime, novel proposals for lunar-based detectors are developed to open the decihertz frequency band (0.1–10 Hz), bridging the gap between terrestrial and space detectors, including the Laser Interferometer Lunar Antenna (LILA). With its extreme seismic quietness and natural ultra-high vacuum, the Moon provides an ideal environment for a gravitational-wave observatory.

This is the sixth annual meeting in the Lunar GW workshop series, following successful editions at Johns Hopkins APL (2025), Belle-Île-en-Mer (2024), Nashville (2023), Bern (2022), and Cascina (2021). The 2026 edition will be held at the Museum of Physics Instruments of the University of Pisa.

This meeting continues community discussions on the Laser Interferometer Lunar Antenna (LILA) project – a proposed detector on the lunar surface to measure gravitational waves in the mid-band between ground-based detectors LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA and the future space mission LISA. The 2026 workshop will focus on defining LILA’s science goals, instrument architecture, and deployment timeline, while expanding and strengthening the global LILA community. Tuesday will be dedicated to a close meetings of the LILA Core team, while scientific sessions will cover Wednesday to Friday.

Key scientific session topics will include:

• Decihertz gravitational-wave science
• Multimessenger astrophysics
• GW instrumentation & technology development for lunar detectors
• Lunar geoscience

Workshop Website

We are pleased to announce the Third GWCats workshop which will take place in Toulouse, France, from 23 to 25 November 2026. 

GWCats: gravitational waves science with galaxy catalogs

GWCats is a cross-disciplinary initiative which aims at gathering together members of the gravitational wave community and members of the astronomical community in order to explore and enable the science emerging from combining gravitational wave observations and electromagnetic surveys, in particular galaxy catalogues.

Goals of the workshop

This is the third workshop of the GWCats initiative, with the previous ones held in Glasgow in 2024 and in Leiden in 2025. The goals of the workshop are multiple: discuss results from ongoing collaborative projects within GWCats, promote both internal and external collaborations, explore new opportunities to expand the science of GWCats, and organise its activities.

Workshop organization

The workshop is organised over three days, with the first two fully dedicated to science and the last one dedicated to GWCats scientific and administrative organisation. All participants are encouraged to stay until lunch on the third day.

There are no registration fees, but there is a maximum number of 60 participants.

Coffee breaks and lunches will be provided to all participants.

Workshop Website

From astrophysics to high-energy physics, from information theory to quantum gravity, black holes have acquired an ever increasing role in fundamental physics, and are now part of the terminology of many important branches of observational, theoretical and mathematical physics.

The Black Holes Workshops gather researchers working on physical and mathematical problems of black holes, both in their classical and quantum aspects, as well as their connections to general relativity and gravitation, string theory, cosmology, and astrophysics, and stimulate the interaction between all these issues.

The workshop will take place at the University of Minho, in December 17 and 18, 2026. Researchers on black holes in all their aspects are invited to participate. Registration for the event will start on September 14th and end on November 30th. The deadline to submit abstracts is November 21st. A limited number of accepted contributions will be selected, taking into account their scientific merit. Submissions of abstracts after the deadline will not be allowed. Please follow the registration instructions.

In this edition there will be no registration fee for participants.

Scientific Organizing Committee

Vitor Cardoso (CENTRA/IST) João Costa (CAMGSD/ISCTE) Carlos Herdeiro (CIDMA/Aveiro University) José Sande Lemos (CENTRA/IST) Filipe Mena (CAMGSD/IST) José Natário (CAMGSD/IST)

Local Organizing Committee

António Morais (LIP-Minho/UM) Ricardo Ferreira (CF-UM) A. Onofre (CF-UM) N. Barros (LIP-Minho/UM) N. Castro (LIP-Minho/UM) H. Carvalho (LIP-Minho) M. Finetti (LIP-Minho) J. Gonçalves (LIP-Minho) V. Oliveira (LIP-Minho) I. Martins (LIP-Minho/UM) D. Araújo (LIP-Minho/UM)

Workshop Website

MAD Workshop is an excellent opportunity to connect with collegues involved in the development of advanced materials for gravitational wave detectors as well as with researchers from crystal growth community and industry who share a deep interest in the topic. Together we will discuss recent achievements and challenges in material research and outline prospects for future cooperation. We are confident that face-to-face workshops with a lot of space for personal interaction and individual meetings will contribute to achieving our common goals.

Workshop Website

The workshop will focus on compact object binaries ranging from stellar mass objects to supermassive black holes. The workshop aims to discuss our current understanding of gravitational-wave sources based on the previous gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations and what we will be able to learn from future observations. Topics to be considered at the workshop include:

Dynamical channel of binary black hole formation
Binary stellar evolution/population
Binary black holes in AGNs
Intermediate - supermassive binary black holes
Electromagnetic signatures of compact binaries
Gravitational-wave data analysis

The workshop is hosted by the Research Center for the Early Universe at University of Tokyo.

Participation and Program

All participants are requested to register by filling out the “Registration” form via the menu on the left of this page. Participants interested in contributing with a talk must also submit an abstract by filling out the “Title of talk” and “Abstract”,  in the registration form. The workshop can accept a limited number  of participants due to the capacity of the room.  In order to receive full consideration, all information must be received by September 15th, 2026. The acceptance of the workshop will be given by September 25th, 2026. 

We plan to focus on invited and contribution talks in the first week. In the second week, we will have a  small number of  talks and  a large fraction of time will be devoted to open discussion. 

Venue

The workshop will take place at Science building No. 1 in the Hongo campus of University of Tokyo.  

Registration fee

The registration fee is 5000 JPY (~33 USD, 30 EUR).  The cost of workshop dinner is  7,000 JPY. The payment method will be annouced later to the accepted participants.

Workshop Dinners

To be determined.

Accommodation

We recommend any business hotel in the Hongo or Ueno area. For example, APA Hotel Keisei Ueno-Ekimae is a business hotel at a walkable distance from UTokyo, just across the Ueno park. Other APA hotels are also nearby (Ueno Eki Minami, Ueno Ekimae, Shin Okachimachi Ekimae). There are many other hotels in the Ueno area.

If you want to stay farther away from the university, commuting by metro is also an easy option. The Hongo campus is well connected to the Marunouchi and Oedo lines (Hongo Sanchome station), the Namboku line (Todaimae st.) and the Chiyoda line (Nezu st.).

For using local transportation, we recommend buying a rechargeable Pasmo (or Suica) card.

Invited Speakers

• Pau Amaro Seoane (Polytechnic University of Valencia)*
• Clement Bonnerot (U of Birmingham)
• Alexander Dittmann (IAS)
• Kohei Inayoshi (KIAA)
• Maximiliano Isi (Columbia)
• Dong Lai (TDLI)
• Wenbin Lu (UCB)
• Andrew MacFadyen (NYU)
• Lucio Mayer (UZH)
• Ehud Nakar (Tel Aviv)
• Smadar Naoz (UCLA)
• Matt Nicholl (Queen’s University Belfast)
• Samaya Nissanke (DESY)
• Re’em Sari (Hebrew U)
• Ataru Tanikawa (Fukui Prefectural U)
• and more (* to be confirmed)

Organizers

• Kenta Hotokezaka, University of Tokyo
• Daniel D’Orazio, Space Telescope Science Institute
• Martin Pessah, Niels Bohr Institute
• Johan Samsing, Niels Bohr Institute
• Soichiro Morisaki, University of Tokyo
• Masaki Ando, University of Tokyo
• Tomoya Kinugawa, Shinshu University

Contact

• Workshop LOC < resceu-nbia-2026-group at g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp >

We gratefully acknowledge the support by the Research Center for the Early Universe at University of Tokyo, the JST FOREST Program (JPMJFR2136) and the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (23H01169, 23H04900).

Workshop Website

How binary black holes and neutron stars form and merge is the central question in gravitational-wave astrophysics. A decade after the first direct detection of a binary black hole merger, it remains unclear which gravitational-wave events probe the evolution of isolated massive binary stars, the dynamics of dense environments like star clusters, and active galactic nuclei, or more exotic pathways. One of the main hurdles has been the low-number statistics that prevented statistically robust identification of sub-populations within the observed population of gravitational-waves.

With the full O4 catalogue expected by the end of 2026, the sample is set to grow to several hundred events, ushering gravitational-wave astronomy into a new era of precision population inference. For the first time, this enables robust multi-parameter analyses (masses, spins, eccentricities, and their correlations) which are crucial for breaking the degeneracies that currently prevent us from deciphering the astrophysical origin of compact-object mergers.

The recent O4a and O4b releases have already prompted several interesting (and sometimes competing) claims about the origins of binary black hole subpopulations, including evidence for hierarchical mergers, features associated with the supernova-remnant mass function, and imprints of isolated binary and triple-star evolution. Many of these results remain only partially supported. In parallel, EM observations from (like the Gaia DR4 release) are substantially expanding the sample of dormant compact objects in binaries with luminous companions, providing essential context for interpreting gravitational-wave events.

Taking place just a few weeks after the planned full O4 data release, the workshop will be a timely opportunity to discuss the wealth of new results from the enlarged gravitational-wave catalogue. It will bring together researchers working on astrophysical theory and modelling, numerical relativity, and gravitational-wave data analysis to explore what are the astrophysical lessons that can be robustly drawn from O4.

The workshop will have a very heavy focus on discussions and interactions to promote problem solving structured around three themes:

• Astrophysical modelling: merger signatures expected from different formation channels
• Data analysis: which features in the data are robust
• Falsification: how the new data constrain and refine astrophysical models

Registration deadline: 8 November 2026

The number of participants is limited. We will confirm participation shortly after registration closes.

Organizers

Jakob Stegmann (MPA), Lieke van Son (Radboud University), Davide Gerosa (Milano-Bicocca), Samaya Nissanke (DESY/DZA), and Salvatore Vitale (MIT).

Workshop Website