Stochastic gravitational wave background from the collisions of dark matter halos

Abstract

We investigate for the first time the effect of the dark matter (DM) halos collisions, namely collisions of galaxies and galaxy clusters, through gravitational bremsstrahlung, on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We first calculate the gravitational wave signal of a single collision event, assuming point masses and linear perturbation theory. Then we proceed to the calculation of the energy spectrum of the collective effect of all dark matter collisions in the Universe. Concerning the DM halo collision rate we show that it is given by the product of the number density of DM halos, which is calculated by the extended Press-Schechter (EPS) theory, with the collision rate of a single DM halo, which is given by simulation results, with a function of the linear growth rate of matter density through cosmological evolution. Hence, integrating over all mass and distance ranges, we finally extract the spectrum of the stochastic gravitational wave background created by DM halos collisions. As we show, the resulting contribution to the stochastic gravitational wave background is of the order of h c ≈ 10 −30 in the pulsar timing array (PTA) band of f ≈ 10 −9 Hz, much smaller than other GW sources, such as super-massive black-hole mergers. However, in very low frequency band, it is larger. With current observational sensitivity it cannot be detected, nevertheless it may be accessible by PTA in the future, where techniques of distinguishing signal overlap should be used in order to isolate it and use it for cosmological studies.