Gravitational shine of dark domain walls

Abstract

Cosmic domain walls are harmless, provided that their tension decreases with expansion of the Universe. This setup can be realized, if the scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking is induced dynamically through the interaction with hot primordial plasma. In that case, the domain wall tension can attain large values in the early Universe without any conflict with observations. Owing to the large initial tension, these topological defects may serve as a powerful source of gravitational waves. We make a preliminary estimate of the gravitational wave spectrum and argue that it is distinct from the spectrum produced by other sources, in particular by domain walls of a constant tension. The resulting gravitational wave signal is in the range accessible by Einstein Telescope, DECIGO, TianQin, LISA, IPTA, or SKA, if the field constituting the domain walls is very feebly coupled with hot primordial plasma and has tiny self-interactions. In particular, one can consider this field for the role of Dark Matter. We discuss various Dark Matter production mechanisms and properties of the emitted gravitational waves associated with them. We find that the conventional freeze-out and freeze-in mechanisms lead to large and perhaps unobservable frequency of gravitational waves. However, the Dark Matter production is also possible at the second order phase transition leading to the domain wall formation or at the inverse phase transition, when the domain walls get dissolved eventually. In both cases, there is essentially no lower bound on the frequency of emitted gravitational waves.

38 pages, 5 figures; matches journal version

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Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Ultra-relativistic bubbles from the simplest Higgs portal and their cosmological consequences
• NANOGrav spectral index $\gamma =3$ from melting domain walls
• Expansion history-dependent oscillations in the scalar-induced gravitational wave background
• Friction on ALP domain walls and gravitational waves
• Revisiting evolution of domain walls and their gravitational radiation with CosmoLattice
• Probing Left-Right Symmetry via Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls
• Domain wall annihilation -- a QFT perspective
• Implications for Cosmic Domain Walls from LIGO-Virgo First Three Observing Runs
• Circularly polarized gravitational waves in Chern-Simons gravity originated from an axion domain wall
• Gravitational waves from a curvature-induced phase transition of a Higgs-portal dark matter sector
• A New Census of the Universe's Entropy
• Non-Scaling Topological Defects and Gravitational Waves in Higgs Portal
• Scalar-induced gravitational wave from domain wall perturbation
• Primordial Black Holes from Spatially Varying Cosmological Constant Induced by Field Fluctuations in Extra Dimensions
• Interaction of domain walls with scalar particles in the early Universe
• Caustic formation in DBI models: Wave propagation on planar domain walls
• Probing High Scale Dirac Leptogenesis via Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls