Tracing beyond GR physics with gravitational waves – qualitative vs quantitative

Gravitational waves are among the ultimate tools to test fundamental physics and promise to answer the long-waiting question about the nature of gravity in the regime of strong fields. The degeneracies between different effects are a serious obstacle, though, to fulfilling this goal since modified gravity often leads to smaller cumulative changes. In the present talk Dr. Daniela Doneva  (Theoretical Astrophysics Group, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany) will focus on a few examples of interesting new effects we can observe in the gravitational wave spectrum that differ qualitatively from the standard picture in general relativity. This includes gravitational phase transition of neutron stars, jumps in the gravitational wave emission from merging black holes, and inverse chirp signal of extreme mass-ratio inspirals. Such effects are valuable because they are a smoking gun of beyond-GR physics that can be easily traced in observations.