Stochastic gravitational wave background from the collisions of dark matter halos

TL;DR

This paper models the gravitational wave background generated by dark matter halo collisions, calculating the contribution across cosmic history and finding it to be currently undetectable with existing instruments.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of the stochastic gravitational wave background from dark matter halo collisions, combining theoretical and simulation data for the first time.

Findings

The gravitational wave signal from a single halo collision is calculated.

The collective background spectrum is derived by integrating over cosmic history.

The predicted signal is too weak for current detection capabilities.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the dark matter (DM) halos collisions, namely collisions of galaxies and galaxy clusters, through gravitational bremsstrahlung, on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We first calculate the gravitational wave signal of a single collision event, assuming point masses and linear perturbation theory. Then we proceed to the calculation of the energy spectrum of the collective effect of all dark matter collisions in the Universe. Concerning the DM halo collision rate, we show that it is given by the product of the number density of DM halos, which is calculated by the extended Press-Schechter (EPS) theory, with the collision rate of a single DM halo, which is given by simulation results, with a function of the linear growth rate of matter density through cosmological evolution. Hence, integrating over all mass and distance ranges, we finally extract the spectrum of the stochastic gravitational wave background created by DM halos collisions. As we show, the resulting contribution to the stochastic gravitational wave background is of the order of $h_{c} \approx 10^{-29}$ in the band of $f \approx 10^{-15} Hz$. However, in very low frequency band, it is larger. With current observational sensitivity it cannot be detected.