Hunting for Dark Particles with Gravitational Waves

Gian F Giudice

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201716402004

Abstract

The LIGO observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger has begun a new era in fundamental physics. If new dark sector particles, be they bosons or fermions, can coalesce into exotic compact objects (ECOs) of astronomical size, then the first evidence for such objects, and their underlying microphysical description, may arise in gravitational wave observations. In this work we study how the macroscopic properties of ECOs are related to their microscopic properties, such as dark particle mass and couplings. We then demonstrate the smoking gun exotic signatures that would provide observational evidence for ECOs, and hence new particles, in terrestrial gravitational wave observatories. Finally, we discuss how gravitational waves can test a core concept in general relativity: Hawking's area theorem.

Highlights

The LIGO detection of GW150914 [1] – the first observed event of gravitational wave (GW) emission from binary black-hole merging – has ushered in a new era in the exploration of our universe
Soon after the LIGO announcement, it was suggested that GW observations can be used to probe violations of the equivalence principle and Shapiro delay [2,3,4,5], modifications of gravity [4, 6,7,8], the presence of event horizons [9], the quantum structure of black holes [10], the hypothesis that dark matter is in the form of primordial black holes [11,12,13], the propagation of gravity waves [4, 14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21], phase transitions in the early universe [22, 23], neutrino properties from associated neutrino emission [24, 25], and axion clouds around black holes [26]
EPJ Web of Conferences properties. In some cases, this could be the only way in which dark particles are discovered, because their extremely feeble interactions make them completely invisible to collider searches or other particle physics experiments

Summary

Introduction

The LIGO detection of GW150914 [1] – the first observed event of gravitational wave (GW) emission from binary black-hole merging – has ushered in a new era in the exploration of our universe. Does this result open new prospects for the study of the astrophysical properties of objects in extreme density conditions, and allows for new ways of testing fundamental physics. In some cases, this could be the only way in which dark particles are discovered, because their extremely feeble interactions make them completely invisible to collider searches or other particle physics experiments. This presentation is based on ref. [27], where an extended discussion and a complete list of references can be found

LIGO Sensitivity on ECO parameters

Features in a Binary Mass Census

On the mass distribution of compact merging binaries in the local Universe

Test of the Area Theorem