Relic gravitational waves from colliding bubbles and cosmic turbulence

Abstract

A stochastic background of gravitational waves can be generated during a cosmological first order phase transition, at least by two distinct mechanisms: collisions of true vacuum bubbles and turbulence in the cosmic fluid. I compare these two contributions, analyzing their relative importance for a generic phase transition. In particular, a first order electroweak phase transition is expected to generate a gravitational wave signal peaked at a frequency which today falls just within the band of the planned space interferometer LISA. For this transition, I find constraints for the relevant parameters in order to produce a signal within the reach of the sensitivity of LISA. The result is that the transition must be strongly first order, alpha > 0.2. In this regime the signal coming from turbulence dominates over that from colliding bubbles.