The curvature perturbations and induced gravitational waves induced by the first-order phase transition during reheating
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Sui, Xiao-Bin Liu, Jing Cai, Rong-Gen |
| author_facet | Sui, Xiao-Bin Liu, Jing Cai, Rong-Gen |
| contents | We propose a novel mechanism where a first-order phase transition modulates the decay rate of a massive field. This modulation, even if the scalar field has negligible energy density, subsequently generates an observable stochastic gravitational-wave background. The stochastic nature of bubble nucleation leads to the asynchrony of phase transitions, generating superhorizon-scale density perturbations through spatial variations in the decay rate $Γ$. These perturbations subsequently source second-order gravitational waves with peak amplitudes governed by the phase transition parameter \(β/H_*\) and decay rate $Γ$.
We apply this mechanism in the reheating scanario where the decay rate of inflaton are modulated by the scalar field that undergoes a first-order phase transition.
Numerical calculations reveal that the gravitational wave energy spectrum typically reaches \(Ω_{\text{GW}} \sim 10^{-10}\), demonstrating prospects for detection by space-based interferometers like LISA, TianQin and Taiji.
This work establishes a new approach to probe phase transition processes in the early Universe without requiring significant vacuum energy release. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_06421 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The curvature perturbations and induced gravitational waves induced by the first-order phase transition during reheating Sui, Xiao-Bin Liu, Jing Cai, Rong-Gen General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology We propose a novel mechanism where a first-order phase transition modulates the decay rate of a massive field. This modulation, even if the scalar field has negligible energy density, subsequently generates an observable stochastic gravitational-wave background. The stochastic nature of bubble nucleation leads to the asynchrony of phase transitions, generating superhorizon-scale density perturbations through spatial variations in the decay rate $Γ$. These perturbations subsequently source second-order gravitational waves with peak amplitudes governed by the phase transition parameter \(β/H_*\) and decay rate $Γ$. We apply this mechanism in the reheating scanario where the decay rate of inflaton are modulated by the scalar field that undergoes a first-order phase transition. Numerical calculations reveal that the gravitational wave energy spectrum typically reaches \(Ω_{\text{GW}} \sim 10^{-10}\), demonstrating prospects for detection by space-based interferometers like LISA, TianQin and Taiji. This work establishes a new approach to probe phase transition processes in the early Universe without requiring significant vacuum energy release. |
| title | The curvature perturbations and induced gravitational waves induced by the first-order phase transition during reheating |
| topic | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06421 |