Gravitational waves from chiral phase transition in a conformally extended standard model

TL;DR

This paper investigates gravitational waves generated during a chiral phase transition in a conformally extended standard model, finding that the predicted signals could be detectable by future space-based observatories like BBO.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel analysis of GW signals from a cosmological phase transition in a conformal extension of the standard model, including a new iterative method for bounce solutions and detailed SNR predictions.

Findings

The inverse duration parameter β/H is greater than 10^3.

The sound wave contribution to GW is significantly reduced due to short τ_sw H.

Predicted GW signals could be detected by BBO with SNR up to 12.

Abstract

The gravitational wave (GW) background produced at the cosmological chiral phase transition in a conformal extension of the standard model is studied. To obtain the bounce solution of coupled field equations we implement an iterative method. We find that the corresponding $O(3)$ symmetric Euclidean action $S_3$ divided by the temperature $T$ has a simple behavior near the critical temperature $T_C$: $S_3/T \propto (1-T/T_C)^{-\gamma}$, which is subsequently used to determine the transition's inverse duration $\beta$ normalized to the Hubble parameter $H$. It turns out that $\beta/H \gtrsim 10^3$, implying that the sound wave period $\tau_\text{sw}$ as an active GW source, too, can be much shorter than the Hubble time. We therefore compute $\tau_\text{sw} H$ and use it as the reduction factor for the sound wave contribution. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for Deci-Hertz Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (DECIGO) and Big Bang Observer (BBO) is evaluated, with the result: SNR$^\text{DECIGO} \lesssim 1.2$ and SNR$^\text{BBO} \lesssim 12.0$ for five years observation, from which we conclude that the GW signal predicted by the model in the optimistic case could be detected at BBO.