The String Soundscape at Gravitational Wave Detectors

Abstract

In this talk, we explore the possibility of gravitational wave production due to ultra-relativistic bubble wall collisions. This occurs due to a process of post-inflationary vacuum decay that takes place via quantum tunnelling within a warped throat (of Randall-Sundrum type). We emphasise the differences between vacuum decay via quantum tunnelling, and a thermal first order phase transition, and how potential gravitational wave signals from both processes differ. We explore a specific example in the context of type IIB string theory, although we argue that our conclusions are more generally applicable to theories with hidden sectors featuring metastable vacua. Many such transitions could have occurred in the post-inflationary Universe, as a large number of throats with exponentially different IR scales can be present in the string landscape, potentially leading to several signals of widely different frequencies – a soundscape connected to the landscape of vacua. Future detectors like LISA will have the required sensitivity to detect these potential signals.