Gravitational waves in the complex-singlet-extended Manohar-Wise model

Abstract

We investigate cosmological phase transitions and stochastic gravitational-wave signals in the Manohar-Wise model extended by a complex scalar singlet. Spontaneous breaking of a discrete Z3 symmetry produces domain walls, whose subsequent annihilation is driven by a small explicit symmetry-breaking bias. Subject to theoretical and experimental constraints, we study two thermal histories: a one-step strong first-order electroweak phase transition satisfying the baryon-number preservation criterion, and a two-step history whose first transition is a first-order transition along the singlet direction, leaving electroweak symmetry unbroken. We estimate the gravitational-wave contributions from sound waves, magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, and domain-wall annihilation. Within the adopted approximations, the phase-transition signals of the selected benchmarks peak at approximately 10^-3 -10^-2 Hz and overlap the projected sensitivity regions of space-based observatories such as LISA, TianQin, and BBO. Choosing the vacuum-energy bias to fix the domain-wall peak at approximately 2x10^-9 Hz, we find that the larger domain-wall tensions of the two-step benchmarks yield signals reaching the projected SKA sensitivity, whereas the one-step sample remains below the pulsar-timing sensitivities considered. These results illustrate the complementarity of millihertz and nanohertz gravitational-wave observations in probing phase transitions and discrete-symmetry breaking in this model.