Irreducible Gravitational Wave Background as a Particle Detector

TL;DR

Spectral features of primordial gravitational-wave backgrounds can be used to directly infer properties of beyond-the-Standard-Model particles, providing a novel probe of particle physics through gravitational-wave observations.

Contribution

This work demonstrates that gravitational-wave spectral features can reconstruct BSM particle parameters, independent of the gravitational-wave source mechanism.

Findings

Primordial GWB spectral features encode BSM particle mass and decay rate.

Long-lived particles induce early matter domination, creating characteristic frequencies in GWB.

Pulsar timing array signals map onto decay lengths accessible in future LLP searches.

Abstract

We show that spectral features of primordial gravitational-wave backgrounds (GWB) can directly reconstruct \textit{Lagrangian} parameters of beyond-the-Standard-Model (BSM) particles, for any transient gravitational-wave production mechanism, independent of the specific source of gravitational waves. Sufficiently long-lived particles generically induce a temporary period of early matter domination in the thermal history of the Universe, which imprints two characteristic frequencies in any primordial GWB corresponding to the onset and end of this epoch. These frequencies are determined by the initial abundance, mass, and decay rate of the species. Once the underlying model and initial abundance are specified, the observed spectral features directly determine the particle mass and decay rate. We find that gravitational-wave observations probe regions of parameter space both complementary to and far beyond the reach of upcoming laboratory searches for long-lived particles. Remarkably, frequencies in the nanohertz band, where a stochastic signal has recently been reported by pulsar timing arrays, map directly onto decay lengths accessible in upcoming long-lived-particle (LLP) searches.