Phase transition during inflation and the gravitational wave signal at pulsar timing arrays

Haipeng An; Boye Su; Hanwen Tai; Lian-Tao Wang; Chen Yang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L121304

Letter

Phase transition during inflation and the gravitational wave signal at pulsar timing arrays

Haipeng An^1,2,3,4,*, Boye Su^1,†, Hanwen Tai ^5,6,‡, Lian-Tao Wang^5,6,7,§, and Chen Yang^1,∥

¹Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
²Center for High Energy Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
³Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
⁴Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing 100084, China
⁵Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
⁶Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
⁷Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

^*anhp@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
^†sby20@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
^‡hanwentai@uchicago.edu
^§liantaow@uchicago.edu
^∥yangc18@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn

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Phys. Rev. D 109, L121304 – Published 18 June, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L121304

Abstract

The gravitational wave (GW) signal offers a promising window into the dynamics of the early Universe. The recent results from the pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) could be the first glimpse of such new physics. In particular, they could point to new details during inflation, which cannot be probed by other means. We explore the possibility that the new results could come from the secondary GWs sourced by curvature perturbations, generated by a first-order phase transition during inflation. Based on the results of a field-theoretic lattice simulation of the phase transition process, we show that the GW signal generated through this mechanism can account for the new results from the PTAs. We analyze the spectral shape of the signal in detail. Future observations can use such information to distinguish the GW signal considered here from other possible sources.

Physical Review D

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Phase transition during inflation and the gravitational wave signal at pulsar timing arrays

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Phase transition during inflation and the gravitational wave signal at pulsar timing arrays

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