Gravitational Waves for New Physics

by Yue Zhao

Thursday 21 Aug 2025, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-037 - TH meeting room (CERN)

Gravitational wave detectors offer promising probes to search for dark
matter, both directly and indirectly. If dark matter originates from a
background of ultralight gauge bosons, these bosons could exert forces
on the test masses of gravitational wave detectors, inducing
displacements with characteristic frequencies determined by the boson
mass. On the indirect side, the Fermi satellite has observed an excess
of GeV gamma rays from the Galactic Center. The origin of this excess
remains under debate, with leading hypotheses including dark matter
annihilation or emission from a population of millisecond pulsars. The
continuous gravitational wave searches conducted by the LVK
collaboration have strong potential to help resolve this long-standing
question.