Gravitational waves from collapsing domain walls

Abstract

We study the production of gravitational waves from cosmic domain walls created during phase transition in the early universe. We investigate the process of formation and evolution of domain walls by running three dimensional lattice simulations. If we introduce an approximate discrete symmetry, walls become metastable and finally disappear. This process might occur by a pressure difference between two vacua if a quantum tunneling is neglected.We calculate the spectrum of gravitational waves produced by collapsing metastable domain walls. Extrapolating the numerical results, we find that the signal of gravitational waves produced by domain walls whose energy scale is around 1010-1012GeV will be observable in the next generation gravitational wave interferometers.