Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Future Gravitational-Wave Detector Facilities

Abstract

The next generation of gravitational-wave observatories can explore a wide range of fundamental physics phenomena throughout the history of the universe. These phenomena include access to the universe's binary black hole population throughout cosmic time, to the universe's expansion history independent of the cosmic distance ladders, to stochastic gravitational-waves from early-universe phase transitions, to warped space-time in the strong-field and high-velocity limit, to the equation of state of nuclear matter at neutron star and post-merger densities, and to dark matter candidates through their interaction in extreme astrophysical environments or their interaction with the detector itself. We present the gravitational-wave detector concepts than can drive the future of gravitational-wave astrophysics. We summarize the status of the necessary technology, and the research needed to be able to build these observatories in the 2030s.

arXiv comment31 pages, 5 figures, contribution to Snowmass 2021

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Detection of Early-Universe Gravitational Wave Signatures and Fundamental Physics
• Emergence of Calabi-Yau manifolds in high-precision black hole scattering
• Probing neutrino interactions and dark radiation with gravitational waves
• Standard siren cosmology in the era of the 2.5-generation ground-based gravitational wave detectors: bright and dark sirens of LIGO Voyager and NEMO