Gravitational waves from cosmic strings and first-order phase transition

Understand

Cosmic strings and first-order phase transition are two main sources for the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB).

• In this work, we study the stochastic gravitational wave radiation from cosmic string which is formed after the first-order phase transition.
• For the first-order phase transition occurs at temperature far beyond the electroweak scale, the gravitational wave signal cannot be reached by the future gravitational wave interferometers.
• The gravitational waves from cosmic strings that formed after the phase transition can be detected by future gravitational wave detectors in a wide range of frequency, and therefore its imprints can serve to search for firs-order phase transitions at high scales with the phase transition temperature: $ \mathcal{O}(10^8)$ GeV $ \leq T_n$ $\leq \mathcal{O}(10^{11})$ GeV.