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Phys. Rev. D 82, 024027 (2010) [17 pages]

Gravity waves as a probe of the Hubble expansion rate during an electroweak scale phase transition

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Daniel J. H. Chung* and Peng Zhou
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1150 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Received 25 March 2010; published 22 July 2010

Just as big bang nucleosynthesis allows us to probe the expansion rate when the temperature of the Universe was around 1 MeV, the measurement of gravity waves from electroweak scale first order phase transitions may allow us to probe the expansion rate when the temperature of the Universe was at the electroweak scale. We compute the simple transformation rule for the gravity wave spectrum under the scaling transformation of the Hubble expansion rate. We then apply this directly to the scenario of quintessence kination domination and show how gravity wave spectra would shift relative to Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and Big Bang Observer projected sensitivities.

© 2010 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.82.024027
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.82.024027
PACS:
04.30.Db

*danielchung@wisc.edu

pzhou@wisc.edu