Gravitational Waves from First-Order Phase Transition in a Simple Axion-Like Particle Model

P. S. Bhupal Dev; Francesc Ferrer; Yiyang Zhang; Yongchao Zhang

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/006

paper

Gravitational Waves from First-Order Phase Transition in a Simple Axion-Like Particle Model

arXiv:1905.00891 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2019/11/006

Abstract

We consider a gauge-singlet complex scalar field $Φ$ with a global $U (1)$ symmetry that is spontaneously broken at some high energy scale $f_{a}$ . As a result, the angular part of the $Φ$ -field becomes an axion-like particle (ALP). We show that if the $Φ$ -field has a non-zero coupling $κ$ to the Standard Model Higgs boson, there exists a certain region in the $(f_{a}, κ)$ parameter space where the global $U (1)$ symmetry-breaking induces a strongly first order phase transition, thereby producing stochastic gravitational waves that are potentially observable in current and future gravitational-wave detectors. In particular, we find that future gravitational-wave experiments such as TianQin, BBO and Cosmic Explorer could probe a broad range of the energy scale $1 0^{3} GeV ≲ f_{a} ≲ 1 0^{8} GeV$ , independent of the ALP mass. Since all the ALP couplings to the Standard Model particles are proportional to inverse powers of the energy scale $f_{a}$ (up to model-dependent $O (1)$ coefficients), the gravitational-wave detection prospects are largely complementary to the current laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological probes of the ALP scenarios.

30 pages, 11 figures, minor changes, version accepted by JCAP

Gravitational Waves from First-Order Phase Transition in a Simple Axion-Like Particle Model

Abstract

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