De Tenebris · Dark Matter Phenomenology in Strong Gravity

A new era has come in the quest for dark matter, due to the absence of evidence for the most popular candidates, despite the enormous effort that has gone into searching for them. Here, I argue that the advent of precision gravitational wave astronomy offers a new extraordinary opportunity to discover DM in the strong gravity regime, and to uncover its particle properties. In a series of recent breakthrough studies, my team has shown that upcoming gravitational interferometers will be sensitive to the characteristic features in the gravitational waveforms induced by matter, and in particular dark matter, in the extreme environment around black holes, as long as our models are accurate enough. The aim of the De Tenebris project is to formulate clear and accurate predictions of the dark matter phenomenology in strong gravity, to enable the discovery of dark matter with gravitational waves. To achieve this goal, we will build relativistic waveforms of binary black holes in presence of dark matter; determine the merger rate of binary black holes in presence of dark matter; assess the gravitational wave signature of dark matter self-annihilation and self-interaction. Discovering dark matter in the strong gravity limit would be an extraordinary achievement per se, as it would validate a central prediction of Standard Cosmology. But my dream is to identify its nature by studying its signature on the observed gravitational waveforms, and find the path to extending the Standard Model of particle physics.