Confinement transition to gravitational waves in the one-flavor $SU(4)$ Hyper Stealth Dark Matter theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamics of a one-flavor SU(4) gauge theory relevant to dark matter, analyzing its confinement transition and resulting gravitational wave signals, highlighting the impact of dark quarks on the gravitational wave amplitude.

Contribution

It provides the first lattice simulation analysis of the thermodynamics of the one-flavor SU(4) gauge theory and its implications for gravitational wave signals from dark matter phase transitions.

Findings

Dark sea quarks lower the interface tension in the confinement transition.

The presence of dark quarks reduces the gravitational wave amplitude.

The study connects lattice results to cosmological gravitational wave predictions.

Abstract

The thermodynamics of the $SU(4)$ gauge theory with a single flavor of fundamental quarks is analyzed on the lattice with dynamical fermion simulations, which is the low-energy sector of a realistic, strongly-interacting dark matter model -- the Hyper Stealth Dark Matter. The gravitational wave spectrum from the first-order confinement transition in the early universe is further calculated, where the effect of the dark sea quarks, which decrease the interface tension in the effective potential of the Polyakov loop, is shown numerically to lower the gravitational wave amplitude.