Hydrodynamics of phase transition fronts and the speed of sound in the plasma

Abstract

The growth of bubbles in cosmological first-order phase transitions involves nontrivial hydrodynamics. For that reason, the study of the propagation of phase transition fronts often requires several approximations. A frequently used approximation consists in describing the two phases as being composed only of radiation and vacuum energy (the so-called bag equation of state). We show that, in realistic models, the speed of sound in the low-temperature phase is generally smaller than that of radiation, and we study the hydrodynamics in such a situation. We find in particular that a new kind of hydrodynamical solution may be possible, which does not arise in the bag model. We obtain analytic results for the efficiency of the transfer of latent heat to bulk motions of the plasma, as a function of the speed of sound in each phase.

44 pages, 19 figures. v2: some comments and references added. v3: Some discussions and a figure added. Results unchanged. Matches published version

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Cited by in corpus (28)

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• The Gravitational-Wave Physics II: Progress
• Model-independent bubble wall velocities in local thermal equilibrium
• Bubble wall dynamics at the electroweak phase transition
• Bubble wall velocity during electroweak phase transition in the inert doublet model
• Energy budget and the gravitational wave spectra beyond the bag model
• Collision Integrals for Cosmological Phase Transitions
• Leptogenesis and Dark Matter Through Relativistic Bubble Walls with Observable Gravitational Waves
• Bubble wall velocity beyond leading-log approximation in electroweak phase transition
• Criterion for ultra-fast bubble walls: the impact of hydrodynamic obstruction
• The energy budget of cosmological first-order phase transitions beyond the bag equation of state
• Gravitational waves from a dark $U(1{)}_D$ phase transition in the light of NANOGrav 12.5 yr data
• Bounds on the bubble wall velocity
• Observable Gravitational Waves in Minimal Scotogenic Model
• Lower bound on the electroweak wall velocity from hydrodynamic instability
• Sound velocity effects on the phase transition gravitational wave spectrum in the sound shell model
• A first order dark $SU(2{)}_D$ phase transition with vector dark matter in the light of NANOGrav 12.5 yr data
• Model-dependent analysis method for energy budget of the cosmological first-order phase transition
• Hydrodynamic effects on the filtered dark matter produced by a first-order phase transition
• Bubble wall velocity and gravitational wave in the minimal left-right symmetric model
• Model-independent features of gravitational waves from bubble collisions
• General bubble expansion at strong coupling
• General backreaction force of cosmological bubble expansion
• Dynamics of bubble walls at the electroweak phase transition
• Inverse bubbles from broken supersymmetry
• Gravitational waves from bubble walls
• Speed of sound in cosmological phase transitions and effect on gravitational waves