Bubble Wall Velocity from Holography

Abstract

Cosmological phase transitions proceed via the nucleation of bubbles that subsequently expand and collide. The resulting gravitational wave spectrum depends crucially on the bubble wall velocity. Microscopic calculations of this velocity are challenging even in weakly coupled theories. We use holography to compute the wall velocity from first principles in a strongly coupled, non-Abelian, four-dimensional gauge theory. The wall velocity is determined dynamically in terms of the nucleation temperature. We find an approximately linear relation between the velocity and the ratio $\Delta \mathcal{P}/\mathcal{E}$, with $\Delta \mathcal{P}$ the pressure difference between the inside and the outside of the bubble and $\mathcal{E}$ the energy density outside the bubble. Up to a rescaling, the wall profile is well approximated by that of an equilibrium, phase-separated configuration at the critical temperature. We verify that ideal hydrodynamics provides a good description of the system everywhere except near the wall.

6 pages, 9 figures. Matches published version in PRD

References in corpus (13)

• LHC Phenomenology of an Extended Standard Model with a Real Scalar Singlet
• Singlet Higgs Phenomenology and the Electroweak Phase Transition
• Holography and colliding gravitational shock waves in asymptotically AdS_5 spacetime
• Phase transitions in the early universe
• Bubble wall velocity: heavy physics effects
• Testing the dark SU(N) Yang-Mills theory Confined Landscape: From the Lattice to Gravitational Waves
• Dark Holograms and Gravitational Waves
• Fate of false vacua in holographic first-order phase transitions
• Effective picture of bubble expansion
• Baryogenesis in the MSSM, nMSSM and NMSSM
• Crossing a large-$N$ phase transition at finite volume
• Gravitational waves from a holographic phase transition
• Non-equilibrium steady state formation in 3+1 dimensions

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Electroweak bubble wall expansion: gravitational waves and baryogenesis in Standard Model-like thermal plasma
• Echo of the Dark: gravitational waves from dark SU(3) Yang-Mills theory
• The Scalar Singlet Extension of the Standard Model: Gravitational Waves versus Baryogenesis
• Bubble Wall Velocity at Strong Coupling
• Holographic Bubbles with Jecco: Expanding, Collapsing and Critical
• Gravitational Waves at Strong Coupling from an Effective Action
• Hydrodynamic backreaction force of cosmological bubble expansion
• Effective actions and bubble nucleation from holography
• A perfect fluid hydrodynamic picture of domain wall velocities at strong coupling
• The energy budget of cosmological first-order phase transitions beyond the bag equation of state
• Stability of black holes with non-minimally coupled scalar hair to the Einstein tensor
• Bubble dynamics in fluids with N-body simulations
• Primordial Black Hole Formation during a Strongly Coupled Crossover
• Black brane evaporation through D-brane bubble nucleation
• Droplet collapse during strongly supercooled transitions
• Gauge structure of the Einstein field equations in Bondi-like coordinates
• Domain Collisions
• Thermal Emission of Gravitational Waves from Weak to Strong Coupling
• A simple description of holographic domain walls in confining theories -- extended hydrodynamics