Probing New Physics with Gravitational Waves

Europe/Berlin
02.430 (Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University)

02.430

Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
Description

The detection of gravitational waves gave us a new way to investigate our universe. All signals so far have been of astrophysical origin, and they revealed the existence of unexpected binary systems with remarkably massive black holes. Apart from astrophysical sources, in the future, we will be able to detect also gravitational waves produced in the early universe. Moreover, general relativity and modified theories of gravity can also be tested by their impact on the GW spectrum generated by astrophysical and cosmological sources. Thus, GW astronomy is a unique tool to probe fundamental physics and eventually discover new theories of Nature, with an expected bright future ahead due to the several new GW observatories that will be built in the next decades.

This workshop will gather leading experts in the field of particle physics and cosmology, interested in discussing the new opportunities offered by gravitational waves as probes of new physics. Furthermore, it will be encouraged the participation of experts from the gravitational wave astrophysics community to discuss in-depth astrophysical backgrounds and precise signal predictions. The outcome of this program will be the identification of the most promising new physics scenarios which will be testable and it will help the community in setting the stage for the future development of our field.

Contact MITP team:
    • 10:00 AM
      Coffee 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 1
      Introduction 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 2
      Gravitational wave background from non-Abelian reheating after axion-like inflation 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Philipp Klose
    • 10:00 AM
      Coffee 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 3
      Gravitational Waves from ALP Dark-Photon Systems 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      Axion-like particles (ALPs) coupled to dark gauge fields can generate a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background that may be observable by current or future GW observatories. The GWs are sourced by the rapid production of anisotropic stress in the dark photon field due to a tachyonic instability induced by the ALP motion. I provide a brief review of this so-called audible axion mechanism and then present two variations of it. First, I discuss this mechanism within the framework of kinetic misalignment, where the amplitude of the GW spectrum is set by the axion's kinetic energy instead of its decay constant. Then, I consider the relaxion and elaborate how it’s post-inflationary evolution can generate GWs in a similar way.

      Speaker: Eric Madge
    • 4
      Universal bounces and thin wall prefactors 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Miha Nemevšek
    • 10:00 AM
      Coffee 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 5
      Neutron Star Mergers Chirp About Vacuum Energy 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Gabriele Rigo
    • 7:00 PM
      Social Dinner 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      Goldisch Restaurant: https://www.goldisch.com

    • 10:00 AM
      Coffee 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 6
      Gauged dark sectors 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Andrea Tesi
    • 7
      Probing primordial fluctuations through stochastic gravitational wave background anisotropies 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds are expected to be anisotropic. While such anisotropies can be of astrophysical origin, a cosmological component of such anisotropies can carry rich information about primordial perturbations. Focusing on the case of a cosmological phase transition, I will talk about how such anisotropies can give us a powerful probe of primordial non-Gaussianities, complementary to current and future CMB and LSS searches. In the scenario where astrophysical foregrounds are also present, I will then discuss some strategies using which we can extract the cosmological signal, focusing on the case of LISA, Taiji and BBO, in particular.

      Speaker: Soubhik Kumar
    • 10:00 AM
      Coffee 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
    • 8
      Probing high and intermediate scale leptogenesis via Gravitational Waves 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Anish Ghoshal
    • 9
      Probing SUSY-breaking scale with Gws 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Gongjun Choi
    • 10
      Model dependence of the GW spectrum of a first order phase transition 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Jorinde van de Vis
    • 11
      Detectable Gravitational Wave Signals from Inflationary Preheating 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      I will describe gravitational wave (GW) production during preheating in hybrid inflation models where an axion-like waterfall field couples to Abelian gauge fields. Based on a linear analysis, I will show that the GW signal from such models can be within the reach of a variety of foreseeable GW experiments such as LISA, AEDGE, ET and CE, and is close to that of LIGO A+, both in terms of frequency range and signal strength. Furthermore, the resultant GW signal is helically polarized and thus may distinguish itself from other sources of stochastic GW background. Finally, such models can produce primordial black holes that can compose dark matter and lead to merger events detectable by GW detectors.

      Speaker: Evangelos Sfakianakis
    • 12
      Cosmology Prior to the BBN and its Impact on Gravitational Waves 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Fazlollah Hajkarim (Goethe University Frankfurt)
    • 13
      Prospects of detecting gravitational waves from primordial black holes in axion haloscopes. 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      Ideas originally developed for axion dark matter can be adopted to search for high-frequency gravitational waves. To illustrate this, I will discuss the Gertsenshtein effect, or the inter-conversion of gravitational waves into electromagnetic waves in the presence of external magnetic (or electric) fields. Exploiting the analogy with axions I will show that axion haloscopes based on lumped-element detectors can probe gravitational waves in the 100 kHz-100 MHz range. Finally, I will discuss the corresponding detection prospects of primordial-black-hole binaries. Based on 2202.00695 (accepted for publication in PRL) and Phys.Rev.Lett. 126 (2021) 2, 021104

      Speaker: Camilo Garcia Cely
    • 14
      Sources and Detection Prospects for GHz Gravitational Waves 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      The talk will be based on our recent publication https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.116011 and might also include material of another upcoming publication. I will talk about possible sources in the high frequency regime as well as detection prospects with cavities.

      Speaker: Jan Scütte-Engel
    • 15
      Dinner Heiliggeist

      Heiliggeist

      Rentengasse 2, 55116 Mainz

      Heiliggeist, Rentengasse 2, 55116 Mainz

    • 16
      Gravitational Waves from Noninteracting Particles from a First Order Phase Transition 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Bibhushan Shakya
    • 17
      Detect the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with Pulsar Timing Arrays 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Xiao Xue
    • 18
      Deformation of the gravitational wave spectrum by density perturbations 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      In recent years, the possibility of having large density perturbations at high wavenumbers has been actively studied, especially in the study of primordial black holes (PBHs). In this presentation, we point out that such density perturbations affect any pre-existing gravitational wave (GW) spectrum through CMB-like effects. Since GWs produced in the early universe propagate through the density perturbations before reaching the observer, GWs coming from each direction experience different evolution depending on the density perturbations. As a result, the observed (directionally averaged) GWs generally have a deformed spectrum compared to the original one. Therefore, by carefully comparing the observed spectrum with the theoretical GW spectrum at the time of production, we may be able to indirectly observe density perturbations at short scales. In this presentation, we explain how this effect shows up and estimate the maximum expected impact on the GW spectrum, taking into account the latest bound on density perturbations from PBH searches. This talk is based on 2002.11083.

      Speaker: Ryusuke Jinno
    • 19
      GW from Inflation triggered first order phase transition 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Lian-Tao Wang (University of Chicago)
    • 20
      Gravitational mergers of the dark sector neutron stars as the origin of antinuclei hunted by AMS-2 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Zurab Berezhiani
    • 21
      TBA 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Alberto Roper Pol
    • 22
      Correlating gravitational wave and gamma-ray signals from primordial black holes 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Yuhsin Tsai
    • 23
      TBA 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Marek Lewiki
    • 24
      The gravitational wave echo of dark holograms 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Nicklas Ramberg
    • 25
      Gravitational Waves from the Dark Side of the Universe 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Laura Sagunski
    • 26
      A Quantum-Mechanical Mechanism for Reducing the Cosmological Constant 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz

      https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.13124

      Speaker: Nemanja Kaloper
    • 27
      Dinner Café Portugal

      Café Portugal

      Heidelbergerfaßgasse 7, 55116 Mainz

      Cafe Portugal, Heidelbergerfaßgasse 7, 55116 Mainz

    • 28
      Primordial gravitational waves boosted by the axion 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Peera Simakachorn
    • 29
      PTA Searches for Gravitational Waves from Cosmic Strings 02.430

      02.430

      Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University

      Staudingerweg 9 / 2nd floor, 55128 Mainz
      Speaker: Kai Schmitz