Confinement Slingshot and Gravitational Waves

TL;DR

This paper introduces the gauge slingshot effect, a quantum field phenomenon where sources crossing phase boundaries produce flux tubes that accelerate them, generating gravitational waves with potential cosmological implications.

Contribution

It presents the first numerical simulation and analysis of the gauge slingshot effect and its role as a novel gravitational wave source in quantum field theory.

Findings

The gauge slingshot effect occurs during phase boundary crossings.

The effect produces gravitational waves as a distinct source.

It has potential cosmological significance in early universe models.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce and numerically simulate a quantum field theoretic phenomenon called the gauge ``slingshot" effect and study its production of gravitational waves. The effect occurs when a source, such as a magnetic monopole or a quark, crosses the boundary between the Coulomb and confining phases. The corresponding gauge field of the source, either electric or magnetic, gets confined into a flux tube stretching in the form of a string (cosmic or a QCD type) that attaches the source to the domain wall separating the two phases. The string tension accelerates the source towards the wall as sort of a slingshot. The slingshot phenomenon is also exhibited by various sources of other co-dimensionality, such as cosmic strings confined by domain walls or vortices confined by $Z_2$ strings. Apart from the field-theoretic value, the slingshot effect has important cosmological implications, as it provides a distinct source for gravitational waves. The effect is expected to be generic in various extensions of the standard model such as grand unification.