IAS Fundamental Physics Seminar Series - Modified Theories of Gravity, Parity, and the Dark Sector

Abstract
Motivated by open questions such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry, the dark sector and a quantum theory of gravity, the speaker will talk about theories beyond the standard cosmological and gravitational paradigms, in particular the theoretical and observational prospects of such theories. He will explain a parameterization he developed to use gravitational waves (GWs) for constraining a wide class of theories beyond general relativity (GR) in explicitly parity-violating and parity-invariant contributions. Such theories can contain candidates for the dark sector, including axions, Kalb-Ramond dark matter, U(1) vector fields and the dilaton. As such, this parameterization facilitates probing beyond-GR theories using compact objects, galactic halos, and cosmological evolution, in addition to other observational windows aside from GWs.