Probing the seesaw scale with gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational wave detection can serve as a novel method to probe the high-energy seesaw scale associated with $U(1)_{B-L}$ symmetry breaking, beyond collider capabilities.

Contribution

It demonstrates that first-order phase transitions in $U(1)_{B-L}$ breaking can produce detectable gravitational waves, linking GW signals to the seesaw scale.

Findings

Gravitational waves from $U(1)_{B-L}$ breaking can be detected in future experiments.

GW signals correlate with the seesaw scale, providing a new probe.

The phase transition can produce large amplitude stochastic GWs.

Abstract

The $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge symmetry is a promising extension of the standard model of particle physics, which is supposed to be broken at some high energy scale. Associated with the $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge symmetry breaking, right-handed neutrinos acquire their Majorana masses and then tiny light neutrino masses are generated through the seesaw mechanism. In this paper, we demonstrate that the first-order phase transition of the $U(1)_{B-L}$ gauge symmetry breaking can generate a large amplitude of stochastic gravitational wave (GW) radiation for some parameter space of the model, which is detectable in future experiments. Therefore, the detection of GWs is an interesting strategy to probe the seesaw scale which can be much higher than the energy scale of collider experiments.