Gravitational wave signatures from discrete flavor symmetries

Abstract

Non-Abelian discrete symmetries have been widely used to explain the patterns of lepton masses and flavor mixing. In these models, a given symmetry is assumed at a high scale and then is spontaneously broken by scalars (the flavons), which acquire vacuum expectation values. Typically, the resulting leading order predictions for the oscillation parameters require corrections in order to comply with neutrino oscillation data. We introduce such corrections through an explicit small breaking of the symmetry. This has the advantage of solving the cosmological problems of these models without resorting to inflation. The explicit breaking induces an energy difference or "bias" between different vacua and drives the evolution of the domain walls, unavoidably produced after the symmetry breaking, towards their annihilation. Importantly, the wall annihilation leads to gravitational waves which may be observed in current and/or future experiments. We show that a distinctive pattern of gravitational waves with multiple overlapped peaks is generated when walls annihilate, which is within the reach of future detectors. We also show that cosmic walls from discrete flavor symmetries can be cosmologically safe for any spontaneous breaking scale between 1 and $10^{18}$ GeV, if the bias is chosen adequately, without the need to inflate the walls away. We use as an example a particular $A_4$ model in which an explicit breaking is included in right-handed neutrino mass terms.

arXiv comment33 pages, 4 figures. Matches published version. Missing reference added

Cited by in corpus (26)

• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls in Pulsar Timing Array Datasets
• QCD-Collapsed Domain Walls: QCD Phase Transition and Gravitational Wave Spectroscopy
• Gravitational waves from axion-like particle cosmic string-wall networks
• Catastrogenesis: DM, GWs, and PBHs from ALP string-wall networks
• Friction on ALP domain walls and gravitational waves
• Primordial black hole dark matter from catastrogenesis with unstable pseudo-Goldstone bosons
• Towards distinguishing Dirac from Majorana neutrino mass with gravitational waves
• Axion minivoids and implications for direct detection
• Classification of Abelian domain walls
• Collapsing domain walls beyond $Z_2$
• Probing Left-Right Symmetry via Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls
• Domain wall annihilation -- a QFT perspective
• Walls, bubbles and doom -- the cosmology of HEFT
• Testing Unification and Dark Matter with Gravitational Waves
• Probing flavor violation and baryogenesis via primordial gravitational waves
• Gravitational waves from cosmic strings in Froggatt-Nielsen flavour models
• Discrete Goldstone Bosons
• Gravitational Wave Signatures of Gauged Baryon and Lepton Number
• Non-Abelian Domain Walls and Gravitational Waves
• Fundamental quantum limits for detecting ultrahigh frequency gravitational waves
• Dynamics of $Z_N$ domain walls with bias directions
• Collapsing domain walls with ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$-violating coupling to thermalized fermions and their impact on gravitational wave detections
• Confronting SO(10) GUTs with proton decay and gravitational waves
• Probing High Scale Dirac Leptogenesis via Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls
• Biased Domain Walls and the Origin of Early Massive Structures