Probing the scale of grand unification with gravitational waves
Abstract
The spontaneous breaking of U(1)_B-L around the scale of grand unification can simultaneously account for hybrid inflation, leptogenesis, and neutralino dark matter, thus resolving three major puzzles of particle physics and cosmology in a single predictive framework. The B-L phase transition also results in a network of cosmic strings. If strong and electroweak interactions are unified in an SO(10) gauge group, containing U(1)_B-L as a subgroup, these strings are metastable. In this case, they produce a stochastic background of gravitational waves that evades current pulsar timing bounds, but features a flat spectrum with amplitude h^2\Omega_GW ~ 10^-8 at interferometer frequencies. Ongoing and future LIGO observations will hence probe the scale of B-L breaking.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1912.03695,
title = {Probing the scale of grand unification with gravitational waves},
author = {Wilfried Buchmuller and Valerie Domcke and Hitoshi Murayama and Kai Schmitz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.03695},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures. v2: updated references, matches version published in PLB