Gravitational Radiation from Primordial Helical Inverse Cascade MHD Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how primordial helical inverse cascade MHD turbulence from bubble collisions during the electroweak phase transition can generate gravitational waves, with spectra detectable by future space-based interferometers.

Contribution

It extends previous models by analyzing different MHD turbulence scenarios and shows the resulting gravitational wave spectrum peaks at lower frequencies with higher amplitudes.

Findings

Gravitational wave spectrum peaks at lower frequency with larger amplitude.

Spectrum is weakly dependent on MHD turbulence model.

Detection prospects are promising for future space-based detectors.

Abstract

We consider the generation of gravitational waves by primordial helical inverse cascade magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence produced by bubble collisions at the electroweak phase transition. We extend the previous study \cite{kgr08} by considering both currently discussed models of MHD turbulence. For popular electroweak phase transition parameter values, the generated gravitational wave spectrum is only weakly dependent on the MHD turbulence model. Compared to the unmagnetized electroweak phase transition case, the spectrum of MHD-turbulence-generated gravitational waves peaks at lower frequency with larger amplitude and can be detected by the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna