James Dent

Sam Houston State University, March 9, 1:00 pm

Gravitational Waves and Physics Beyond the Standard Model

The advent of gravitational wave astronomy has opened a fantastic new window on the study of physics beyond the standard model of particle physics and early universe cosmology. This talk will touch on several theoretical arenas of new physics that can be explored with gravitational waves including primordial black holes, superradiance, and first order phase transitions, along with the relevance of these topics to axions, dark matter, and dark sector physics. A discussion of current searches and discovery prospects for these intriguing possibilities at present and future gravitational wave observatories across a broad range of frequencies will also be given.