The Quest for Dark Matter

After a brief historical perspective on the observations and theoretical arguments that made dark matter an essential element of the standard cosmological model, I will summarize what past experiments have taught us about its nature. I will then discuss what these lessons imply for the next decade of searches. Finally, I will present a rapidly growing new direction we are developing: using gravitational waves to probe dark matter. In non-technical terms, I will outline the prospects for characterizing, and potentially identifying, dark matter with gravitational-wave observations, spanning a wide range of candidate scenarios and possible signatures.