Gravitational Waves: The Theorist’s Swiss Knife

Abstract

Gravitational waves provide a novel and powerful way to test astrophysical models of compact objects, early universe processes, beyond the Standard Model particle physics, dark matter candidates, Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and extended gravity models, and even quantum gravity candidate theories. A short introduction to the gravitational-wave background and the method we are using to detect it will be presented. Constraints on various astrophysical/cosmological models from the non-detectability of the gravitational-wave background will be discussed. Gravitational waves from transients will be highlighted and their physical implications will be summarised.

Keywords

• gravitational waves
• stochastic gravitational-wave background
• gravitational-wave transients
• compact binaries
• cosmic strings
• phase transitions