NANOGrav spectral index $\gamma=3$ from melting domain walls
Abstract
We discuss cosmic domain walls described by a tension red-shifting with the expansion of the Universe. These melting domain walls emit gravitational waves with the low-frequency spectral shape corresponding to the spectral index favoured by the recent NANOGrav 15 yrs data. We discuss a concrete high-energy physics scenario leading to such a melting domain wall network in the early Universe. This scenario involves a feebly coupled scalar field, which can serve as a promising dark matter candidate. We identify parameters of the model matching the gravitational wave characteristics observed in the NANOGrav data. The dark matter mass is pushed to the ultra-light range below which is accessible through planned observations thanks to the effects of superradiance of rotating black holes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.04582,
title = {NANOGrav spectral index $\gamma=3$ from melting domain walls},
author = {E. Babichev and D. Gorbunov and S. Ramazanov and R. Samanta and A. Vikman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.04582},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
7 revtex pages, 1 figure; added references and appendix with the calculation of gravitational wave spectrum; matches version accepted in PRD