Relic gravitational waves from the chiral plasma instability in the standard cosmological modelShow others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Physical Review D: covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology, ISSN 2470-0010, E-ISSN 2470-0029, Vol. 109, no 4, article id 043534Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
In the primordial plasma, at temperatures above the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking, the presence of chiral asymmetries is expected to induce the development of helical hypermagnetic fields through the phenomenon of chiral plasma instability. It results in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence due to the high conductivity and low viscosity and sources gravitational waves that survive in the universe today as a stochastic polarized gravitational wave background. In this article, we show that this scenario only relies on Standard Model physics, and therefore the observable signatures, namely the relic magnetic field and gravitational background, are linked to a single parameter controlling the initial chiral asymmetry. We estimate the magnetic field and gravitational wave spectra, and validate these estimates with 3D numerical simulations.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Physical Society (APS) , 2024. Vol. 109, no 4, article id 043534
National Category
Subatomic Physics Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-367483DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.109.043534ISI: 001179504700003Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85188212790OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-367483DiVA, id: diva2:1984884
Note
QC 20250718
2025-07-182025-07-182025-07-18Bibliographically approved