Multifaceted Supercooling: From PTA to LIGO

TL;DR

This paper explores how supercooled phase transitions can alter gravitational wave spectra from cosmic strings, potentially making them detectable by future gravitational wave observatories and explaining current PTA signals.

Contribution

It reveals that supercooled phases can suppress high-frequency gravitational waves from cosmic strings, expanding the observable parameter space for upcoming detectors.

Findings

Supercooled phases can reshape gravitational wave spectra from cosmic strings.

The scenario can reconcile LIGO null results with PTA signals.

Multiple future detectors can probe the proposed parameter space.

Abstract

Supercooled phase transitions, as predicted, e.g., in near-conformal and confining extensions of the Standard Model (SM), are established sources of strong stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs). In this work, we investigate another facet of such transitions: their significant and largely uncharted impact on gravitational wave spectra originating from independent cosmological sources. Focusing on gravitational waves produced by a metastable cosmic string network, we show that an intervening supercooled phase, initiating thermal inflation, can reshape and suppress the high-frequency part of the spectrum. This mechanism reopens regions of string parameter space previously excluded by LIGO's null results, while remaining compatible with the nanohertz SGWB signal reported by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). The resulting total spectrum typically exhibits a dual-component structure, sourced by both string decay and the phase transition itself, rendering the scenario observationally distinctive. We systematically classify the viable parameter space and identify regions accessible to upcoming detectors such as Advanced LIGO, LISA, and ET.