Gravitational Waves from Collapsing Vacuum Domains

Abstract

The breaking of an approximate discrete symmetry, the final stages of a first order phase transition, or a post-inflationary biased probability distribution for scalar fields are possible cosmological scenarios characterized by the presence of unstable domain wall networks. Combining analytical and numerical techniques, we show that the non-spherical collapse of these domains can be a powerful source of gravitational waves. We compute their contribution to the stochastic background of gravitational radiation and explore their observability by present and future gravitational wave detectors.

Comments: Revised version to appear in Physical Review Letters. Changes have been made which improve the presentation of the results. Figure 3 was modified, but conclusions remain the same