The stochastic gravitational wave background from turbulence and magnetic fields generated by a first-order phase transition

By C. Caprini, R. Durrer, G. Servant. 2009

490 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analytically derive the spectrum of gravitational waves due to magneto-hydrodynamical turbulence generated by bubble collisions in a first-order phase transition. In contrast to previous studies, we take into account the fact that turbulence and magnetic fields act as sources of gravitational waves for many Hubble times after the phase transition is completed. This modifies the gravitational wave spectrum at large scales. We also model the initial stirring phase preceding the Kolmogorov cascade, while earlier works assume that the Kolmogorov spectrum sets in instantaneously. The continuity in time of the source is relevant for a correct determination of the peak position of the gravitational wave spectrum. We discuss how the results depend on assumptions about the unequal-time correlation of the source and motivate a realistic choice for it. Our treatment gives a similar peak frequency as previous analyses but the amplitude of the signal is reduced due to the use of a more realistic power spectrum for the magneto-hydrodynamical turbulence. For a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition, the signal is observable with the space interferometer LISA.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0e1efab64b6350778f33718c087c2f39a11c1a13

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Marek Lewicki
2. C. Caprini
3. John Ellis
4. J. No
5. T. Konstandin
6. V. Vaskonen
7. G. Servant
8. R. Durrer

Citations in the corpus

• Cosmological Magnetic Fields: Their Generation, Evolution and Observation (2013, methodology): “We closely follow the treatment of Caprini et al (2009c).”
• Gravitational wave energy budget in strongly supercooled phase transitions (2019, background): “Turbulence also sources GWs, and its contribution to the GW spectrum is given by [63]”
• The Gravitational-Wave Physics (2017, background): “The state-of-art result of the GWs spectrum from PTs due to non-helical MHD turbulence was analytically established in [78], where it ignored the circularly polarized GWs [79–85] from helical turbulence due to the macroscopic parity violation.”
• Electroweak phase transition and baryogenesis in composite Higgs models (2018, background): “[89]) is needed to get a more refined prediction for the spectrum.”
• Dark, cold, and noisy: constraining secluded hidden sectors with gravitational waves (2018, background): “[57] C.”
• Gravitational wave, collider and dark matter signals from a scalar singlet electroweak baryogenesis (2017, background): “These are the collisions of the bubble walls [58–60], sound waves generated after the transition [61, 62], and the magneto-hydrodynamical (MHD) turbulence in the plasma [63].”
• Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. II: gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions (2015, background): “The spectral shape has been found analytically and is given by [6, 25]”
• Gravitational waves from first order cosmological phase transitions in the Sound Shell Model (2019, background): “of turbulence [21, 22, 51].”
• Cosmological backgrounds of gravitational waves and eLISA/NGO: phase transitions, cosmic strings and other sources (2012, methodology): “14 due to the very small kinetic viscosity, the MHD turbulence dissipates slowly in the early universe: therefore, the GW source is in general active for many Hubble times after the completion of the PT.”
• Updated predictions for gravitational waves produced in a strongly supercooled phase transition (2020, background): “GWs are subsequently produced by the ensuing turbulence [100].”
• Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “The initial bubble collision and subsequent turbulent cascade lead to relativistic flows and acceleration of matter that radiate gravitational waves on a scale not far below the horizon scale (Caprini et al., 2009, Hogan, 1986, Huber and Konstandin, 2008, Kamionkowski et al., 1994, Witten, 1984).”