The stochastic gravitational-wave background is a superposition of many astrophysical and cosmological sources, such as unresolved compact binaries, cosmic strings, and phase transitions in the early Universe. We highlight the importance of source separation in the case of a detection. By separating the individual sources, we can reveal remnants of early-universe processes. We use the data from the third LVK observing run to explore the parameter space of first-order phase transition models. We then investigate signs of parity violation in gravitational-wave data.

In this talk I’ll discuss two recent results on BH superradiance: first, I will describe how BH photon superradiance is typically quenched by interactions of the photon cloud with the ambient electrons. Second, I will explain how an axionic cloud may impact the CMB if it decays into low energy photons which quickly heat and ionise the surrounding medium to Mpc scales.

First order cosmological phase transitions in beyond the Standard Model theories may trigger the

Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) aim to detect nHz gravitational waves (GWs) from supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). This is done by looking for correlated variations of the Time of Arrivals (TOA) across an array of ultra-stable millisecond pulsars. Comparing the predicted TOAs from our timing model against the measured TOAs gives us the residuals. These contain the imprint of GWs, but also other effects and sources of noise processes.

Although inflation is broadly accepted to be the standard paradigm for early universe cosmology, many of its quantum properties remain unknown. For instance, the crowning glory of inflation lies in explaining late-time macroscopic inhomogeneities as arising from tiny quantum fluctuations; however, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that entanglement between the modes of the fluctuating field plays in its observable predictions.