Challenges and Opportunities of Gravitational Wave Searches above 10 kHz

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges, potential scientific opportunities, and detector concepts for gravitational wave searches above 10 kHz, emphasizing the possibility of discovering new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of high-frequency gravitational wave detection challenges, potential sources, and compares proposed detector sensitivities, summarizing insights from recent workshops.

Findings

High-frequency GW searches can probe physics beyond the Standard Model.

Several detector concepts show promising sensitivity in the >10 kHz range.

Scarcity of sources makes detection challenging but scientifically valuable.

Abstract

The first direct measurement of gravitational waves by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations has opened up new avenues to explore our Universe. This white paper outlines the challenges and gains expected in gravitational-wave searches at frequencies above the LIGO/Virgo band. The scarcity of possible astrophysical sources in most of this frequency range provides a unique opportunity to discover physics beyond the Standard Model operating both in the early and late Universe, and we highlight some of the most promising of these sources. We review several detector concepts that have been proposed to take up this challenge, and compare their expected sensitivity with the signal strength predicted in various models. This report is the summary of a series of workshops on the topic of high-frequency gravitational wave detection, held in 2019 (ICTP, Trieste, Italy), 2021 (online) and 2023 (CERN, Geneva, Switzerland).