Gravitational waves and Einstein's two body problem

Abstract: On 11 February 2016 the detection of gravitational waves was announced thereby both confirming a 100 year old prediction of Einstein's theory of gravity and opening a new observational window to the universe. The inferred wave source was a pair of black holes each weighing some 30 solar masses. This talk shall explain how such a system can be solved, and how essential concepts from Quantum Field Theory were shown to be central in the understanding of the classical evolution of strongly curved space-time.  Central notions include the two-body effective action, field elimination through Feynman diagrams, a non-relativistic decomposition of Einstein's field, and finally divergences, their regularization and renormalization.