Optical ultra-stable optical clock cavities as resonant mass gravitational wave detectors in search for new physics

Abstract

We propose to use table-top-size ultra-stable optical cavities from the state-of-the-art optical atomic clocks as bar gravitational wave detectors for the frequencies higher than 2 kHz. We show that 2-20 kHz range of gravitational waves' spectrum can be accessed with instruments below 2 meters in size. The proposed cavities' materials and properties are being within the present-day technology grasp. The ultra-stable optical cavities allow detecting not only predicted gravitational wave signals from such sources as binary neutron star mergers and post-mergers, subsolar-mass primordial black-hole mergers, and collapsing stellar cores, but can reach new physics beyond standard model looking for ultralight bosons such as QCD axions and axion-like particles formed through black hole superradiance.