Cosmological Gravitational Wave Background from Phase Transitions in Neutron Stars

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that collapse of neutron stars induced by a phase transition to quark matter can be a considerable source of gravitational waves with kHz frequencies. We demonstrate that if about one percent of all neutron stars undergo this process, the resulting cosmological gravitational wave background would reach about 10^-10 times the critical density. The background would peak at kHz frequencies and could have an observationally significant tail down to Hz frequencies. It would be comparable or higher than other astrophysical backgrounds, for example, from ordinary core collapse supernovae, from r-mode instabilities in rapidly rotating neutron stars, or from magnetars. The scenario is consistent with cosmological backgrounds in neutrinos and photons.