The Benefits of Diligence: How Precise are Predicted Gravitational Wave Spectra in Models with Phase Transitions?

Abstract

Models of particle physics that feature phase transitions typically provide predictions for stochastic gravitational wave signals at future detectors and such predictions are used to delineate portions of the model parameter space that can be constrained. The question is: how precise are such predictions? Uncertainties enter in the calculation of the macroscopic thermal parameters and the dynamics of the phase transition itself. We calculate such uncertainties with increasing levels of sophistication in treating the phase transition dynamics. Currently, the highest level of diligence corresponds to careful treatments of the source lifetime; mean bubble separation; going beyond the bag model approximation in solving the hydrodynamics equations and explicitly calculating the fraction of energy in the fluid from these equations rather than using a fit; and including fits for the energy lost to vorticity modes and reheating effects. The lowest level of diligence incorporates none of these effects. We compute the percolation and nucleation temperatures, the mean bubble separation, the fluid velocity, and ultimately the gravitational wave spectrum corresponding to the level of highest diligence for three explicit examples: SMEFT, a dark sector Higgs model, and the real singlet-extended Standard Model (xSM). In each model, we contrast different levels of diligence in the calculation and find that the difference in the final predicted signal can be several orders of magnitude. Our results indicate that calculating the gravitational wave spectrum for particle physics models and deducing precise constraints on the parameter space of such models continues to remain very much a work in progress and warrants care.

43 pages, 16 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (23)

• LHC Phenomenology of an Extended Standard Model with a Real Scalar Singlet
• Singlet Higgs Phenomenology and the Electroweak Phase Transition
• Gravitational Waves from Phase Transitions at the Electroweak Scale and Beyond
• Gravitational wave energy budget in strongly supercooled phase transitions
• Scale for the Phase Diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics
• Minimal Extension of the Standard Model Scalar Sector
• Dynamics of Non-renormalizable Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
• Singlet-Catalyzed Electroweak Phase Transitions and Precision Higgs Studies
• On the validity of perturbative studies of the electroweak phase transition in the Two Higgs Doublet model
• Taming Infrared Divergences in the Effective Potential
• Standard Model with a Complex Scalar Singlet: Cosmological Implications and Theoretical Considerations
• Detectability of Gravitational Waves from Phase Transitions
• Cosmological Phase Transitions and their Properties in the NMSSM
• Baryogenesis and gravity waves from a UV-completed electroweak phase transition
• Improved sphaleron decoupling condition and the Higgs coupling constants in the real singlet-extended SM
• Gravitational waves from the minimal gauged $U(1{)}_{B-L}$ model
• Electroweak Phase Transition and LHC Signatures in the Singlet Majoron Model
• Probing electroweak phase transition with multi-TeV muon colliders and gravitational waves
• Real scalar phase transitions: a nonperturbative analysis
• Cosmological phase transitions: is effective field theory just a toy?
• Phase transition gravitational waves from pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone dark matter and two Higgs doublets
• Gradient effects on false vacuum decay in gauge theory
• LIGO as a probe of Dark Sectors

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Cosmological phase transitions: from perturbative particle physics to gravitational waves
• Exploring the Early Universe with Gaia and THEIA
• First principles determination of bubble wall velocity
• The Gravitational-Wave Physics II: Progress
• Probing QCD critical point and induced gravitational wave by black hole physics
• Supercool subtleties of cosmological phase transitions
• The Primordial Black Holes that Disappeared: Connections to Dark Matter and MHz-GHz Gravitational Waves
• Did we hear the sound of the Universe boiling? Analysis using the full fluid velocity profiles and NANOGrav 15-year data
• Turn up the volume: Listening to phase transitions in hot dark sectors
• Higher-Order Corrections to the Bubble-Nucleation Rate at Finite Temperature
• Electroweak Phase Transition and Gravitational Waves in the Type-II Seesaw Model
• Bubble Nucleation to All Orders
• Multi-step phase transitions and gravitational waves in the inert doublet model
• Hunting WIMPs with LISA: Correlating dark matter and gravitational wave signals
• Updated constraints on Georgi-Machacek model, and its electroweak phase transition and associated gravitational waves
• Convergence of the nucleation rate for first-order phase transitions
• Sensitivity to Dark Sector Scales from Gravitational Wave Signatures
• PhaseTracer2: from the effective potential to gravitational waves
• False vacuum decay rates, more precisely
• New Physics Search at the CEPC: a General Perspective
• Cosmological phase transitions, gravitational waves and self-interacting dark matter in the singlet extension of MSSM
• Gravitational Waves from Mini-Split SUSY
• Model-independent features of gravitational waves from bubble collisions
• Gravitational waves and tadpole resummation: Efficient and easy convergence of finite temperature QFT
• Observational prospects for phase transitions at LISA: Fisher matrix analysis
• Phase Transitions and Gravitational Waves in a Model of ${\mathbb{Z}}_3$ Scalar Dark Matter
• Baryogenesis and gravitational waves in the Zee-Babu Model
• Gravitational waves from supercooled phase transitions in conformal Majoron models of neutrino mass
• Measuring gravitational wave spectrum from electroweak phase transition and Higgs self-couplings
• Dark matter production accompanied by gravitational wave signals during cosmological phase transitions