Nearly EUR 10 million for joint project in particle and gravitational wave physics

Universities of Bonn and Mainz successful with other partners in the European Research Council's Synergy Grants program

5 November 2024

PRESS RELEASE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BONN

The University of Bonn and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) can celebrate a success in the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grants program together with other partners. The purpose of the GravNet project, conducted together with the Spanish Institut de Física d'Altes Energies (IFAE) and the Italian Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati (INFN-LNF), is to build a global network of high-frequency gravitational wave detectors. GravNet is to receive roughly EUR 10 million in funding over a six-year period, approximately EUR 2.1 million of which are earmarked for JGU. The ERC Synergy Grants program provides financial support to research groups that bring together scientists with differing skillsets, knowledge and resources in order to tackle major research questions.

Establishing a global network of detectors

The GravNet project ("A Global Network for the Search for High Frequency Gravitational Waves") bridges particle physics and gravitational wave physics, aiming to establish a global network of detectors dedicated to searching for high-frequency gravitational waves. This detector network could help address one of the major unresolved questions in modern physics: the nature of dark matter. "High-frequency gravitational waves could, for instance, be generated during the merging of so-called primordial black holes. Such signatures would then be detectable by our global detector network," says GravNet spokesperson Prof. Dr. Matthias Schott from the Physics Institute at the University of Bonn. "And these black holes are ideal candidates for dark matter."

As part of the ERC project, researchers will first develop the detectors for the planned network and then install these at the sites in Bonn, Mainz and Frascati. "Based on cavity resonators for strong magnetic fields, our detectors will register a very weak electrical signal in the presence of a high-frequency gravitational wave," Professor Schott explains. "Such signals are so extremely faint that they can only be detected using modern quantum technologies." Professor Schott's GravNet collaboration partners are Professor Dr. Dmitry Budker of JGU, Professor Diego Blas of IFAE and Dr. Claudio Gatti of INFN-LNF. "The most exciting thing about this project is that high-frequency gravitational waves give us completely new eyes on the universe. Since Galileo, such new senses have repeatedly led us to wonderful and unexpected discoveries," says Professor Budker.

This ambitious undertaking is solely possible thanks to the ERC Synergy Grant program, which provides funding for up to four "principal investigators" who contribute their own special competencies and resources in a collaborative effort to tackle a major research question. "To realize GravNet, it will take local experimentation infrastructures and expertise in cryo- and magnetic technologies, quantum sensors, theoretical physics, data analysis and extremely low-noise electronics," elaborates Professor Schott.