ICTS Summer School on Gravitational-Wave Astronomy
13 July 2026 to 24 July 2026
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, TIFR, Bengaluru, India
URL: https://icts.res.in/program/gwa2026
Application deadline: 15 May 2026
Applications are invited for the ICTS Summer School on Gravitational-Wave Astronomy 2026. This school is part of the annual ICTS summer schools on gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy, which is rapidly becoming a precision science. Extracting physics and astrophysics from GW observations relies on accurate theoretical models, whose construction requires a synthesis of analytical and numerical relativity. In the past decade, major breakthroughs have emerged from applying high-energy physics techniques to GW source modelling. They provide systematic methods to compute higher-order effects in the GW signals. This is the focus of the current school, which will contain four graduate-level mini courses:
- Effective Field Theory Approach to post-Newtonian Gravity: Jan Steinhoff (Albert Einstein Institute)
- Applications of Scattering Amplitudes to Compact Binary Inspirals: Donal O’Connell (Edinburgh)
- Tails to the Gravitational Memory and Soft Graviton Theorems: Ashoke Sen (ICTS)
- Effective Field Theory for Extreme Mass Ratio Binaries: (TBC)
Eligibility Criteria: The school is aimed primarily at graduate students and postdocs in GW physics, theoretical high-energy physics, and related fields. A limited number of well-prepared, highly motivated senior undergraduates will also be considered. A solid background in general relativity and high-energy physics techniques (e.g., Feynman diagrams) is required.