Gravitational wave background from non-Abelian reheating after axion-like inflation

Abstract

A pseudoscalar inflaton $\phi$, coupled to the topological charge density $F\tilde{F}$ of a non-Abelian sector, can decay to gauge bosons ($\phi \to gg$), which may thermalize rapidly. The friction felt by $\phi$ is then increased by non-Abelian "strong sphalerons", leading to a self-amplifying process that can efficiently heat up the medium. We determine a lower bound for the gravitational wave production rate from such a process, originating via hydrodynamic fluctuations and particle collisions, in terms of a minimal number of parameters. Only a moderate fraction of energy density is converted to gravitational waves, suggesting that non-Abelian models may avoid the overproduction observed in some Abelian cases.

18 pages. v2: clarifications added

References in corpus (23)

• Challenges and Opportunities of Gravitational Wave Searches at MHz to GHz Frequencies
• A Gravitational Wave Background from Reheating after Hybrid Inflation
• Gravitational waves at interferometer scales and primordial black holes in axion inflation
• The Sphaleron Rate in SU(N) Gauge Theory
• Perturbative Thermal QCD: Formalism and Applications
• Gravitational Waves as a Big Bang Thermometer
• The art of simulating the early Universe -- Part I
• Gravitational wave background from Standard Model physics: Complete leading order
• Relaxation from particle production
• Baryon Asymmetry and Gravitational Waves from Pseudoscalar Inflation
• Universal Constraints on Axions from Inflation
• Dark Energy Radiation
• Thermalized Axion Inflation
• Minimal warm inflation with complete medium response
• Nano-Hz gravitational wave signature from axion dark matter
• Gravitational waves from the fragmentation of axion-like particle dark matter
• Warming up cold inflation
• Gravitational Waves from an Axion-Dark Photon System: A Lattice Study
• Warm-assisted natural inflation
• The Cosmological Heavy Ion Collider: Fast Thermalization after Cosmic Inflation
• Analytic study of dark photon and gravitational wave production from axion
• Efficient numerical integration of thermal interaction rates
• Thermal Perturbations from Cosmological Constant Relaxation

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Gravitational Wave from Graviton Bremsstrahlung during Reheating
• Freezing-In Gravitational Waves
• Revealing the Cosmic History with Gravitational Waves
• Gravitational wave background from vacuum and thermal fluctuations during axion-like inflation
• Shapes of non-Gaussianity in warm inflation
• Upper Bound on Thermal Gravitational Wave Backgrounds from Hidden Sectors
• Shape of the hot topological charge density spectral function
• Double-graviton production from Standard Model plasma
• Maximal temperature of strongly-coupled dark sectors
• Present and future of CosmoLattice
• On Sphaleron Heating in the Presence of Fermions
• Update on gravitational wave signals from post-inflationary phase transitions
• No Warm Inflation From a Vanilla Axion
• Sterile neutrino rates for general $M$, $T$, $\mu$, $k$: review of a theoretical framework
• Probing Gravitational Dark Matter with Ultra-high Frequency Gravitational Waves
• Stochastic gravitational wave from graviton bremsstrahlung in inflaton decay into massive spin 3/2 particles
• Classical equipartition dynamics between axions and non-Abelian gauge fields
• Production of Primordial Gravitational Waves in Teleparallel Gravity