Gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions
Abstract
I discuss the generation of a stochastic background of gravitational waves during a first order phase transition. I present simple general arguments which explain the main features of the gravitational wave spectrum like the k3 power law growth on large scales and a estimate for the peak amplitude. In the second part I concentrate on the electroweak phase transition and argue that the nucleosynthesis bound on its gravitational wave background seriously limits seed magnetic fields which may have been generated during this transition.
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