Hydrodynamics of ultra-relativistic bubble walls
arXiv:1510.07747 · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2016.02.009
Abstract
In cosmological first-order phase transitions, gravitational waves are generated by the collisions of bubble walls and by the bulk motions caused in the fluid. A sizeable signal may result from fast-moving walls. In this work we study the hydrodynamics associated to the fastest propagation modes, namely, ultra-relativistic detonations and runaway solutions. We compute the energy injected by the phase transition into the fluid and the energy which accumulates in the bubble walls. We provide analytic approximations and fits as functions of the net force acting on the wall, which can be readily evaluated for specific models. We also study the back-reaction of hydrodynamics on the wall motion, and we discuss the extrapolation of the friction force away from the ultra-relativistic limit. We use these results to estimate the gravitational wave signal from detonations and runaway walls.
30 pages, 11 figures. v2: typos corrected, reference added, a new fit provided in the appendix. v3: a section on GWs added; matches version accepted in NPB
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- The Gravitational-Wave Physics
- Gravitational waves from bubble dynamics: Beyond the Envelope
- Hearing without seeing: gravitational waves from hot and cold hidden sectors
- Bubble nucleation and growth in very strong cosmological phase transitions
- Gravitational waves from a very strong electroweak phase transition
- The String Soundscape at Gravitational Wave Detectors
- Bubble Clustering in Cosmological First Order Phase Transitions
- Model-independent features of gravitational waves from bubble collisions
- Gravitational Waves from the Cosmological Quark-Hadron Phase Transition Revisited
- Gravitational waves from bubble walls