Upper bound on thermal gravitational wave backgrounds from hidden sectors

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: Marco Drewes
• Author: Yannis Georis
• Author: Juraj Klaric
• Author: Philipp Klose
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Science; (Department of Physics)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: NATURAL SCIENCES; Physics

Abstract (english)

Hot viscous plasmas unavoidably emit a gravitational wave background, similar to electromagnetic black body radiation. We study the contribution from hidden particles to the diffuse background emitted by the primordial plasma in the early universe. While this contribution can easily dominate over that from Standard Model particles, we find that both are capped by a generic upper bound that makes them difficult to detect with interferometers in the foreseeable future. We illustrate our results for axion-like particles and heavy neutral leptons. Finally, our results suggest that previous works overestimated the gravitational wave background from particle decays out of thermal equilibrium.

• Keywords (english): thermal gravitational wave
• Language: english
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review - international
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
• Numbering: vol. 2024, no. 06, 073
• e-ISSN: 1475-7516
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2024/06/073
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:217:271935
• Publication: 2024-06-28
• Document URL: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2024/06/073
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Public note: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of Sissa Medialab. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received: January 19, 2024. Revised: May 31, 2024. Accepted: June 3, 2024. Published: June 28, 2024.
• Created on: 2024-07-24 11:09:41