Reheating signature in the gravitational wave spectrum from self-ordering scalar fields

Abstract

We investigate the imprint of reheating on the gravitational wave spectrum produced by self-ordering of multi-component scalar fields after a global phase transition. The equation of state of the Universe during reheating, which usually has different behaviour from that of a radiation-dominated Universe, affects the evolution of gravitational waves through the Hubble expansion term in the equations of motion. This gives rise to a different power-law behavior of frequency in the gravitational wave spectrum. The reheating history is therefore imprinted in the shape of the spectrum. We perform $512^3$ lattice simulations to investigate how the ordering scalar field reacts to the change of the Hubble expansion and how the reheating effect arises in the spectrum. We also compare the result with inflation-produced gravitational waves, which has a similar spectral shape, and discuss whether it is possible to distinguish the origin between inflation and global phase transition by detecting the shape with future direct detection gravitational wave experiments such as DECIGO.

12 pages, 9 figures

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• Irreducible background of gravitational waves from a cosmic defect network: update and comparison of numerical techniques
• Primordial non-Gaussianities of gravitational waves beyond Horndeski
• Gravitational wave from warm inflation
• A narrow-band parameterization for the stochastic gravitational wave background