No Arabic abstract
We show how the generation of right-handed neutrino masses in Majoron models may be associated with a first-order phase transition and accompanied by the production of a stochastic background of gravitational waves (GWs). We explore different energy scales with only renormalizable operators in the effective potential. If the phase transition occurs above the electroweak scale, the signal can be tested by future interferometers. We consider two possible energy scales for phase transitions below the electroweak scale. If the phase transition occurs at a GeV, the signal can be tested at LISA and provide a complementary cosmological probe to right-handed neutrino searches at the FASER detector. If the phase transition occurs below 100 keV, we find that the peak of the GW spectrum is two or more orders of magnitude below the putative NANOGrav GW signal at low frequencies, but well within reach of the SKA and THEIA experiments. We show how searches of very low frequency GWs are motivated by solutions to the Hubble tension in which ordinary neutrinos interact with the dark sector. We also present general calculations of the phase transition and Euclidean action that apply beyond Majoron models.
First order phase transitions in the early Universe generate gravitational waves, which may be observable in future space-based gravitational wave observatiories, e.g. the European eLISA satellite constellation. The gravitational waves provide an unprecedented direct view of the Universe at the time of their creation. We study the generation of the gravitational waves during a first order phase transition using large-scale simulations of a model consisting of relativistic fluid and an order parameter field. We observe that the dominant source of gravitational waves is the sound generated by the transition, resulting in considerably stronger radiation than earlier calculations have indicated.
We survey systematically the general parametrisations of particle-physics models for a first-order phase transition in the early universe, including models with polynomial potentials both with and without barriers at zero temperature, and Coleman-Weinberg-like models with potentials that are classically scale-invariant. We distinguish three possibilities for the transition - detonations, deflagrations and hybrids - and consider sound waves and turbulent mechanisms for generating gravitational waves during the transitions in these models, checking in each case the requirement for successful percolation. We argue that in models without a zero-temperature barrier and in scale-invariant models the period during which sound waves generate gravitational waves lasts only for a fraction of a Hubble time after a generic first-order cosmological phase transition, whereas it may last longer in some models with a zero-temperature barrier that feature severe supercooling. We illustrate the implications of these results for future gravitational-wave experiments.
We introduce a model in which the genesis of dark matter (DM) and neutrino masses is associated with a first order phase transition of a scalar singlet field. During the phase transition a source right-handed neutrino (RHN) acquires a spacetime-dependent mass dynamically, a small fraction of which is converted via resonant oscillations into a very weakly mixed dark RHN which decays to a dark matter RHN with the observed relic abundance. Neutrino masses are generated via a traditional two RHN type-I seesaw between a fourth RHN and the source neutrino. The gravitational waves produced during the phase transition have a peak frequency that increases with the DM mass, and are detectable at future gravitational wave interferometers for DM masses above ~ 1 MeV. Since the source RHNs are heavier than the electroweak scale, successful leptogenesis is also attainable.
Within a recently proposed classically conformal model, in which the generation of neutrino masses is linked to spontaneous scale symmetry breaking, we investigate the associated phase transition and find it to be of strong first order with a substantial amount of supercooling. Carefully taking into account the vacuum energy of the metastable minimum, we demonstrate that a significant fraction of the models parameter space can be excluded simply because the phase transition cannot complete. We argue this to be a powerful consistency check applicable to general theories based on classical scale invariance. Finally, we show that all remaining parameter points predict a sizable gravitational wave signal, so that the model can be fully tested by future gravitational wave observatories. In particular, most of the parameter space can already be probed by the upcoming LIGO science run starting in early 2019.
We investigate the sensitivity of future space-based interferometers such as LISA and DECIGO to the parameters of new particle physics models which drive a first-order phase transition in the early Universe. We first perform a Fisher matrix analysis on the quantities characterizing the gravitational wave spectrum resulting from the phase transition, such as the peak frequency and amplitude. We next perform a Fisher analysis for the quantities which determine the properties of the phase transition, such as the latent heat and the time dependence of the bubble nucleation rate. Since these quantities are determined by the model parameters of the new physics, we can estimate the expected sensitivities to such parameters. We illustrate this point by taking three new physics models for example: (1) models with additional isospin singlet scalars (2) a model with an extra real Higgs singlet, and (3) a classically conformal $B-L$ model. We find that future gravitational wave observations play complementary roles to future collider experiments in pinning down the parameters of new physics models driving a first-order phase transition.