Gravitational waves from first-order phase transition in a simple axion-like particle model

Abstract

We consider a gauge-singlet complex scalar field Φ with a global U(1) symmetry that is spontaneously broken at some high energy scale ƒ a . As a result, the angular part of the Φ-field becomes an axion-like particle (ALP). We show that if the Φ-field has a nonzero coupling κ to the Standard Model Higgs boson, there exists a certain region in the (ƒ a , κ) parameter space where the global U(1) symmetry-breaking induces a strongly first order phase transition, thereby producing stochastic gravitational waves that are potentially observable in current and future gravitational-wave detectors. In particular, we find that future gravitational-wave experiments such as TianQin, BBO and Cosmic Explorer could probe a broad range of the energy scale 10 3 GeV ≳ ƒ a ≳ 108 GeV, independent of the ALP mass. Since all the ALP couplings to the Standard Model particles are proportional to inverse powers of the energy scale ƒ a (up to model-dependent O (1) coefficients), the gravitationalwave detection prospects are largely complementary to the current laboratory, astrophysical and cosmological probes of the ALP scenarios.