At the Highest-Frequency Frontier: Thermal Gravitational Waves from Supernovae
Abstract
Core-collapse supernovae can be powerful sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) as the extreme temperatures and densities in the core allow a considerable number of gravitons to be produced thermally. We present the first systematic calculation of the thermal GW spectrum of a core-collapse supernova. By evaluating the dominant emission channels---including electron and proton photoproduction (γe−→ he−, γp→ h p) and gravitational bremsstrahlung (e−p→ e−p h, e−e−→ e−e−h)---we find that a core-collapse supernova generates a total thermal GW luminosity of 1.27×1026 W, approximately 18 orders of magnitude larger than that of the Sun. The thermal GW spectrum peaks at energies of 𝒪(0.1 GeV), extending the predicted spectrum of known GW sources to an unprecedented high-frequency regime. Our results provide a benchmark thermal GW spectrum at the high-frequency frontier.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{xu2026highestfrequency,
title = {{At the Highest-Frequency Frontier: Thermal Gravitational Waves from Supernovae}},
author = {Xun-Jie Xu and Yong Xu and Qiqin Yin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.30984},
eprint = {2610.30984},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30984},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - At the Highest-Frequency Frontier: Thermal Gravitational Waves from Supernovae
AU - Xun-Jie Xu
AU - Yong Xu
AU - Qiqin Yin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.30984
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.30984
AB - Core-collapse supernovae can be powerful sources of high-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) as the extreme temperatures and densities in the core allow a considerable number of gravitons to be produced thermally. We present the first systematic calculation of the thermal GW spectrum of a core-collapse supernova. By evaluating the dominant emission channels---including electron and proton photoproduction (γe^−→ he^−, γp→ h p) and gravitational bremsstrahlung (e^−p→ e^−p h, e^−e^−→ e^−e^−h)---we find that a core-collapse supernova generates a total thermal GW luminosity of 1.27×10^26 W, approximately 18 orders of magnitude larger than that of the Sun. The thermal GW spectrum peaks at energies of 𝒪(0.1 GeV), extending the predicted spectrum of known GW sources to an unprecedented high-frequency regime. Our results provide a benchmark thermal GW spectrum at the high-frequency frontier.
ER -