Probing the Scale of New Physics by Advanced LIGO/VIRGO

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational wave detectors like LIGO/VIRGO can potentially detect signals from high-energy phase transitions beyond the Standard Model, providing insights into new physics scales such as Peccei-Quinn and supersymmetry breaking.

Contribution

It demonstrates that gravitational wave observations can probe new physics associated with first-order phase transitions at energies around 10^7-10^8 GeV, linking cosmological signals to particle physics models.

Findings

Stochastic gravitational waves from high-energy phase transitions are within LIGO/VIRGO sensitivity.

Peak frequency of these gravitational waves corresponds to the energy scale of the phase transition.

Potential to constrain or discover new physics scenarios like Peccei-Quinn and supersymmetry breaking.

Abstract

We show that if the new physics beyond the Standard Model is associated with a first-order phase transition around $10^7-10^8$ GeV, the energy density stored in the resulting stochastic gravitational waves and the corresponding peak frequency are within the projected final sensitivity of the advanced LIGO/VIRGO detectors. We discuss some possible new physics scenarios that could arise at such energies, and in particular, the consequences for Peccei-Quinn and supersymmetry breaking scales.