Gravitational waves from supercooled phase transitions in conformal Majoron models of neutrino mass

Summary, in English

We study supercooled first-order phase transitions above the QCD scale in a wide class of conformal Majoron-like U(1)′ models that explain the totality of active neutrino oscillation data and produce a detectable stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) at LIGO, LISA and ET. We place constraints on the U(1)′ breaking scale and gauge coupling using current LIGO-Virgo-Kagra data. We find that strong supercooling can be ruled out in large regions of parameter space if a SGWB is not detected by these experiments. A null signal at LIGO and ET will disfavor a type-I seesaw scale above 10¹⁴ GeV, while a positive signal is a signature of heavy right-handed neutrinos. On the other hand, LISA will be sensitive to seesaw scales as low as a TeV, and could detect a SGWB even if the right-handed neutrinos are decoupled.

• Author: João Gonçalves; Danny Marfatia; António P. Morais; Roman Pasechnik
• Department/s: Particle and nuclear physics
• Publishing year: 2025-02
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Volume: 2025
• Issue: 2
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP02(2025)110
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Subatomic Physics
• Keywords: Early Universe Particle Physics; New Gauge Interactions; Phase Transitions in the Early Universe; Sterile or Heavy Neutrinos
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1029-8479