Gravitational Wave Probes of Fundamental Physics

Session

Short talks

11 Nov 2019, 14:10

Riet (Volkshotel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

60. Gravitational Collider Physics

John Stout (University of Amsterdam)

11/11/2019, 14:10

Short talk

Gravitational wave astronomy will play a transformative role in astrophysics; can it do the same for particle physics? An ultralight bosonic field will extract mass and angular momentum from a rapidly spinning black hole, forming a gravitationally bound condensate reminiscent of the hydrogen atom. This "gravitational atom" will have nontrivial dynamics if it is part of a binary inspiral. I...

69. Fundamental and Gravitational Wave Science with Pulsar Timing

Siyuan Chen (NRT Nancay, CNRS Orleans, France)

11/11/2019, 15:55

Short talk

Since the discovery of pulsar 50 years ago, they have proven to be very useful astronomical objects. Spinning neutron stars with a very stable rotation period as low as a few milliseconds, emitting radio pulses, similar to a lighthouse. These periodic radio signals can be detected and timed on Earth with an accurate timing model describing the entire process from emission at the pulsar through...

53. Dark Energy Instabilities induced by Gravitational Waves

Giovanni Tambalo (SISSA)

11/11/2019, 16:10

Short talk

In this talk I will discuss the decay of gravitational waves (GW) into dark energy fluctuations π in the context of the EFT of Dark Energy.
In such theories, the time-dependence of the Dark Energy (DE) field spontaneously breaks Lorentz invariance. Therefore as for light in a material, GW travelling in the cosmic medium are affected by dispersion phenomena and can decay into DE fluctuations....

67. Constraining the speed of gravity using astrometric measurements

Deyan Mihaylov (University of Cambridge)

11/11/2019, 16:25

Short talk

Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds induce correlated patterns in the redshift and astrometric shifts of objects on the sky. The astrometric equivalent of the Hellings-Downs curve depends on the polarization content as the group velocity of the GWs making up the stochastic background. I will explain how these results relate to the measurements taken by the Gaia mission and how they can...

72. Binary black holes beyond general relativity

Masha Okounkova (Flatiron Institute)

12/11/2019, 11:30

Short talk

At some length scale, Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) must break down and be reconciled with quantum mechanics in a quantum theory of gravity. Binary black hole mergers probe the strong field, non-linear, highly dynamical regime of gravity, and thus gravitational waves from these systems could contain beyond-GR signatures. While LIGO presently performs model-independent and...

64. Radiation from Global Topological Strings using Adaptive Mesh Refinement

Ms Amelia Drew (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge)

12/11/2019, 11:45

Short talk

The groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves by LIGO has opened up a brand new window into observational cosmology, catalysing research into gravitational wave signatures from a wide range of astrophysical and cosmological sources. In this work, we calculate accurate radiative signatures from topological `cosmic’ strings, implementing adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) simulations of global...

68. Cross-correlation of the astrophysical gravitational-wave background with galaxy clustering

Omar Contigiani (Leiden University)

12/11/2019, 12:00

Short talk

We investigate the correlation between the distribution of galaxies and the predicted gravitational-wave background of astrophysical origin. We show that the large angular scale anisotropies of this background are dominated by nearby non-linear structure, which depends on the notoriously hard to model galaxy power spectrum at small scales. In contrast, we report that the cross-correlation of...

79. A Unique Multi-Messenger Probe of QCD Axion Dark Matter

Thomas Edwards (University of Amsterdam)

12/11/2019, 16:30

Short talk

We propose a multi-messenger probe of QCD axion dark matter (DM) based on observations of black hole-neutron star binary inspirals. It is suggested that a dense DM spike may grow around intermediate mass black holes. The presence of such a spike produces two unique effects: a distinct phase shift in the gravitational wave strain during the inspiral period and an enhancement of the radio...

49. Novel signatures of dark matter in laser-interferometric gravitational-wave detectors

Dr Yevgeny Stadnik (Kavli IPMU, University of Tokyo)

12/11/2019, 16:45

Short talk

Dark matter may induce apparent temporal variations in the physical ``constants'', including the electromagnetic fine-structure constant and fermion masses. In particular, a coherently oscillating classical dark-matter field may induce apparent oscillations of physical constants in time, while the passage of macroscopic dark-matter objects (such as topological defects) may induce apparent...

81. Gravitational Wave Detection at low frequency with Atom Interferometry

Andrea Bertoldi (Institut d'Optique)

12/11/2019, 17:00

Short talk

Atom interferometry promises to extend the detection bandwidth of GW detectors in the mid-frequency band (10 mHz - 10 Hz), where Earth based optical detectors are limited by low frequency gravity noise. Adopting as probes arrays of atomic ensembles in free fall, and tracking their motion on geodesics with atom interferometry allows the suppression of Newtonian Noise, enables low frequency...

82. Black holes in string theory and observations

Bert Vercnocke (KU Leuven)

12/11/2019, 17:15

Short talk

In this talk I will address a theoretical underpinning of potential quantum modifications to classical GR black holes from the perspective of string theory. I will discuss theoretical motivations, new insights over the last two decades, and give a view on observational consequences.

85. Gravitational Waves signatures from collisions of exotic compact objects

Eugene Lim

13/11/2019, 11:30

Short talk

I will talk about GW signatures from the collisions of exotic compact objects (ECOs). I will argue that getting good high quality signatures require good control over the initial conditions which is currently one of the key challenges. I will also discuss whether ECOs can act as black hole mimics.

55. Probing the Early and Late Universe with the Gravitational-Wave Background

Mr Alexander Jenkins (King's College London)

13/11/2019, 11:45

Short talk

One of the most exciting targets for current and future gravitational-wave (GW) observatories is the stochastic GW background (SGWB)---a persistent all-sky signal, sourced by the incoherent emission of GWs from many independent sources throughout the history of the Universe. In particular, the SGWB is a sensitive probe of cosmic strings: line-like topological defects formed through spontaneous...

66. Massive black hole binaries in the cosmos

Marta Volonteri

13/11/2019, 12:00

Short talk

I will outline our current understanding on how massive black holes, routinely found in galaxy centers, form in galaxies in the first billion years of the Universe and how they form binaries, eventually coalescing emitting gravitational waves in the frequency range observable by LISA and PTAs.

71. test short talk

Adam Coogan (University of Amsterdam)

Short talk

test short talk