Manuel Reichert (University of Sussex)

Gravitational waves from dark confinement and chiral phase transitions

Strongly-coupled dark sectors offer natural UV-complete extensions to the Standard Model that are challenging to access experimentally if they are only weakly coupled to the Standard Model. In this talk, I will present the possibility to test these dark sectors via gravitational-wave signals from the dark chiral or confinement phase transition. Due to the non-perturbative nature of the QCD-like sectors, we adapt Lattice data to effective models from which we can compute the bubble nucleation in the early Universe. I will present results in a pure SU(N) Yang-Mills sector where we use the effective Polyakov loop model, as well as an SU(3) sector with quarks in the fundamental, adjoint, and two-index symmetric representation employing the PNJL model.

The talk is based on:

- Dark confinement and chiral phase transitions: gravitational waves vs matter representations (https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.11552)

- Testing the dark SU(N) Yang-Mills theory confined landscape: From the lattice to gravitational waves (https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.11614)