No Arabic abstract
We calculate the gravitational-wave spectra produced by the electroweak phase transition with TeV-scale Beyond-Standard-Model physics in the early universe. Our study captures the effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations within a non-perturbative framework. We discover a universal relation between the mean bubble separation and the strength parameter of the phase transition, which holds for a wide range of new-physics contributions. The ramifications of this result are three-fold: First, they constrain the gravitational-wave spectra resulting from heavy (TeV-scale) new physics. Second, they contribute to distinguishing heavy from light new physics directly from the gravitational-wave signature. Third, they suggest that a concerted effort of gravitational-wave observations together with collider experiments could be required to distinguish between different models of heavy new physics.
Gravitational waves (GWs) from strong first-order phase transitions (SFOPTs) in the early Universe are a prime target for upcoming GW experiments. In this paper, I construct novel peak-integrated sensitivity curves (PISCs) for these experiments, which faithfully represent their projected sensitivities to the GW signal from a cosmological SFOPT by explicitly taking into account the expected shape of the signal. Designed to be a handy tool for phenomenologists and model builders, PISCs allow for a quick and systematic comparison of theoretical predictions with experimental sensitivities, as I illustrate by a large range of examples. PISCs also offer several advantages over the conventional power-law-integrated sensitivity curves (PLISCs); in particular, they directly encode information on the expected signal-to-noise ratio for the GW signal from a SFOPT. I provide semianalytical fit functions for the exact numerical PISCs of LISA, DECIGO, and BBO. In an appendix, I moreover present a detailed review of the strain noise power spectra of a large number of GW experiments. The numerical results for all PISCs, PLISCs, and strain noise power spectra presented in this paper can be downloaded from the Zenodo online repository [https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3689582]. In a companion paper [1909.11356], the concept of PISCs is used to perform an in-depth study of the GW signal from the cosmological phase transition in the real-scalar-singlet extension of the standard model. The PISCs presented in this paper will need to be updated whenever new theoretical results on the expected shape of the signal become available. The PISC approach is therefore suited to be used as a bookkeeping tool to keep track of the theoretical progress in the field.
Light axion fields, if they exist, can be sourced by neutron stars due to their coupling to nuclear matter, and play a role in binary neutron star mergers. We report on a search for such axions by analysing the gravitational waves from the binary neutron star inspiral GW170817. We find no evidence of axions in the sampled parameter space. The null result allows us to impose constraints on axions with masses below $10^{-11} {rm eV}$ by excluding the ones with decay constants ranging from $1.6times10^{16} {rm GeV}$ to $10^{18} {rm GeV}$ at $3sigma$ confidence level. Our analysis provides the first constraints on axions from neutron star inspirals, and rules out a large region in parameter space that has not been probed by the existing experiments.
Gravitational-wave astronomy has the potential to substantially advance our knowledge of the cosmos, from the most powerful astrophysical engines to the initial stages of our universe. Gravitational waves also carry information about the nature of black holes. Here we investigate the potential of gravitational-wave detectors to test a proposal by Bekenstein and Mukhanov that the area of black hole horizons is quantized in units of the Planck area. Our results indicate that this quantization could have a potentially observable effect on the classical gravitational wave signals received by detectors. In particular, we find distorted gravitational-wave echoes in the post-merger waveform describing the inspiral and merger of two black holes. These echoes have a specific frequency content that is characteristic of black hole horizon area quantization.
We study the possibility of probing new physics accounting for $(g-2)_mu$ anomaly and gravitational waves with pulsar timing array measurements. The model we consider is either a light gauge boson or neutral scalar interacting with muons. We show that the parameter spaces of dark $U(1)$ model with kinetic mixing explaining $(g-2)_mu$ anomaly can realize a first-order phase transition, and the yield-produced gravitational wave may address the common red noise observed in the NANOGrav 12.5-yr dataset.
Several experiments observed deviations from the Standard Model (SM) in the flavour sector: LHCb found a $4-5,sigma$ discrepancy compared to the SM in $bto smu^+mu^-$ transitions (recently supported by an Belle analysis) and CMS reported a non-zero measurement of $htomutau$ with a significance of $2.4,sigma$. Furthermore, BELLE, BABAR and LHCb founds hints for the violation of flavour universality in $Bto D^{(*)}tau u$. In addition, there is the long-standing discrepancy in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Interestingly, all these anomalies are related to muons and taus, while the corresponding electron channels seem to be SM like. This suggests that these deviations from the SM might be correlated and we briefly review some selected models providing simultaneous explanations.