The detection of gravitational waves from merging compact objects opened a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. The next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are being developed and designed, which will achieve significant improvement in sensitivity (an order-of-magnitude better sensitivity compared to the current generation in the full or part of the frequency band). Such improvement will open new observational windows to the Universe through gravitational waves, enabling studies for extreme astrophysics about neutron stars, black holes, supernovae, extreme dense matter when two neutron stars collide, fundamental physics, cosmology, dark sector of the Universe, etc.

At the Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics, we are collaborating with international institutes to study the science cases and designs for next-generation gravitational-wave detectors, e.g., Cosmic Explorer [1]. Meantime, Australian scientists proposed a new detector concept that targets the detection of binary neutron star mergers and the related extreme matter astrophysics in the kHz region – the Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO) [2]. Other designs of an Australia-based next-generation detector are also being explored. The prospects of gravitational-wave observations and multi-messenger astronomy with the next-generation detector network, remaining to be explored in detail, will benefit the new detector design and the research on required cutting-edge technologies. 

[1] M. Evans et al., A Horizon Study for Cosmic Explorer: Science, Observatories, and Community, arXiv:2109.09882 (2021)

[2] K. Ackley et al., Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory: A kilohertz-band gravitational-wave detector in the global network, https://doi.org/10.1017/pasa.2020.39 (2020)