Fabrizio Rompineve
CERN

Abstract
Gravitational waves can be a powerful probe of phenomena which may have occurred in the very early Universe, much before recombination. These would most likely be related to new physics beyond the Standard Model.
In this talk, I focus on one such source of gravitational waves: the annihilation of networks of topological defects (string and domain walls) which are intrinsic to the QCD axion solution to the strong CP problem. In particular, I discuss how a heavy QCD axion, which is motivated by the lore that global symmetries cannot be exact, can be discovered or constrained already at the operating LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA interferometers, with the opportunity of a correlated signal also at Electric Dipole Moment measurements. Predictions for future GW searches are also discussed.

2021 December 13, 16:30

IA
Online broadcast (Zoom)