Pion condensation in the early Universe at nonvanishing lepton flavor asymmetry and its gravitational wave signatures

Abstract

We investigate the possible formation of a Bose-Einstein condensed phase of pions in the early Universe at nonvanishing values of lepton flavor asymmetries. A hadron resonance gas model with pion interactions, based on first-principle lattice QCD simulations at nonzero isospin density, is used to evaluate cosmic trajectories at various values of electron, muon, and tau lepton asymmetries that satisfy the available constraints on the total lepton asymmetry. The cosmic trajectory can pass through the pion condensed phase if the combined electron and muon asymmetry is sufficiently large: $|l_e+l_{\mu }|\gtrsim 0.1$, with little sensitivity to the difference $l_e-l_{\mu }$ between the individual flavor asymmetries. Future constraints on the values of the individual lepton flavor asymmetries will thus be able to either confirm or rule out the condensation of pions during the cosmic QCD epoch. We demonstrate that the pion condensed phase leaves an imprint both on the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves and on the mass distribution of primordial black holes at the QCD scale e.g. the black hole binary of recent LIGO event GW190521 can be formed in that phase.

6 pages main text + 5 pages supplementary material, contains ancillary files with figure data, to appear in Physical Review Letters

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Cited by in corpus (22)

• Observational Evidence for Primordial Black Holes: A Positivist Perspective
• Phase Transitions in Particle Physics -- Results and Perspectives from Lattice Quantum Chromo-Dynamics
• Formation of Binary Black Holes Similar to GW190521 with a Total Mass of $\sim 150M_{\odot }$ from Population III Binary Star Evolution
• Equation of state and speed of sound of isospin-asymmetric QCD on the lattice
• Cosmology meets functional QCD: First-order cosmic QCD transition induced by large lepton asymmetries
• Hot QCD at finite isospin density: confronting SU(3) Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with recent lattice data
• Lepton Flavour Asymmetries and the Mass Spectrum of Primordial Black Holes
• How the QCD trace anomaly behaves at the core of twin stars?
• Formation of a supergiant quantum vortex in a relativistic Bose-Einstein condensate driven by rotation and a parallel magnetic field
• Reentrant pion superfluidity and cosmic trajectories within PNJL model
• Critical point and Bose-Einstein condensation in pion matter
• Strange quark matter as dark matter: 40 years later, a reappraisal
• Pion stars embedded in neutrino clouds
• Phase diagram of interacting pion matter and isospin charge fluctuations
• First-order QCD transition in a primordial magnetic field
• Phonon modes of magnetic vortex lattices in finite isospin chiral perturbation theory
• Chiral symmetry breaking and pion condensation in the early universe
• Dimensional reduction and the generalized pion in a magnetic field within the NJL model
• Finite volume and magnetic field effects on the two-pion correlation function in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Primordial black holes and lepton flavor violation with scotogenic dark matter
• Primordial Black Holes Formation Beyond the Standard Cosmic QCD Transition
• Absence of charged pion condensation in a magnetic field with parallel rotation