Constraints on holographic QCD phase transitions from PTA observations

Abstract

The underlying physics of QCD phase transition in the early Universe remains largely unknown due to its strong-coupling nature during the quark-gluon plasma/hadron gas transition, yet a holographic model has been proposed to quantitatively fit the lattice QCD data while with its duration of the first-order phase transition (FoPT) left undetermined. At specific baryon chemical potential, the first-order QCD phase transition agrees with the observational constraint of baryon asymmetry. It, therefore, provides a scenario for phase transition gravitational waves (GWs) within the Standard Model of particle physics. If these background GWs could contribute dominantly to the recently claimed common-spectrum red noise from pulsar timing array (PTA) observations, the duration of this FoPT can be well constrained, and the associated primordial black holes are still allowed by current observations.