The Cosmological QCD Phase Transition Revisited

Abstract

The QCD phase diagram might exhibit a first order phase transition for large baryochemical potentials. We explore the cosmological implications of such a QCD phase transition in the early universe. We propose that the large baryon-asymmetry is diluted by a little inflation where the universe is trapped in a false vacuum state of QCD. The little inflation is stopped by bubble nucleation which leads to primordial production of the seeds of extragalactic magnetic fields, primordial black holes and gravitational waves. In addition the power spectrum of cold dark matter can be affected up to mass scales of a billion solar masses. The imprints of the cosmological QCD phase transition on the gravitational wave background can be explored with the future gravitational wave detectors LISA and BBO and with pulsar timing.

7 pages, invited talk given at the International School of Nuclear Physics, 32nd Course: Particle and Nuclear Astrophysics, Erice, Sicily, September 16-24, 2010, discussion of previous work on QCD inflation included, refs. added

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• Can we observe the QCD phase transition-generated gravitational waves through pulsar timing arrays?
• Thermodynamics of (2+1)-flavor strongly interacting matter at nonzero isospin
• The quark gluon plasma equation of state and the expansion of the early Universe
• Gravitational waves from chiral phase transition in a conformally extended standard model
• When Is Holography Consistent?
• A Universal Lower Bound on the Specific Temperatures of AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom Black Holes with Flat Event Horizons
• QCD Equation of State and Cosmological Parameters in Early Universe
• The Trajectory of the Cosmic Plasma Through the Quark Matter Phase Diagram
• Transition rate and gravitational wave spectrum from first-order QCD phase transitions
• Holography of Little Inflation
• Hot Quark Matter with Neutrino Confinement in the Framework of the Local Nambu--Jona-Lasinio SU(3) Model
• Baryon inhomogeneities in a charged quark gluon plasma
• Study of entropy production due to electroweak phase transition in $Z_2$ symmetric extension of the Standard Model
• The $\theta$-angle and axion physics of two-color QCD at fixed baryon charge. Part I
• Particle dark matter density and entropy production in the early universe
• Cosmic QCD transition-from quark to strangeon and nucleon
• Cosmology from Strong Interactions
• Primordial Black Holes Formation Beyond the Standard Cosmic QCD Transition