First order phase transitions could play a major role in the early universe, providing important phenomenological consequences, such as the production of gravitational waves and the generation of baryon asymmetry. An important aspect that determines the properties of the phase transition is the dynamics of the true-vacuum bubbles, which is controlled by the density perturbations in the hot plasma. We study this aspect presenting, for the first time, the full solution of the linearized Boltzmann equation for the top quark species coupled to the Higgs field during a first-order electroweak phase transition. Our approach, differently from the traditional one based on the fluid approximation, does not rely on any ansatz and can fully capture the density perturbations in the plasma. We find that our results significantly differ from the ones obtained in the fluid approximation (including its extensions and modifications), both at the qualitative and quantitative level. In particular sizable differences are found for the friction acting on the bubble wall.
The standard picture of electroweak baryogenesis requires slowly expanding bubbles. This can be difficult to achieve if the vacuum expectation value of a gauge singlet scalar field changes appreciably during the electroweak phase transition. It is important to determine the bubble wall velocity in this case, since the predicted baryon asymmetry can depend sensitively on its value. Here, this calculation is discussed and illustrated in the real singlet extension of the Standard Model. The friction on the bubble wall is computed using a kinetic theory approach and including hydrodynamic effects.…
In extensions of the Standard Model with extra scalars, the electroweak phase transition can be very strong, and the bubble walls can be highly relativistic. We revisit our previous argument that electroweak bubble walls can "run away," that is, achieve extreme ultrarelativistic velocities $γ\sim 10^{14}$. We show that, when particles cross the bubble wall, they can emit transition radiation. Wall-frame soft processes, though suppressed by a power of the coupling $α$, have a significance enhanced by the $γ$-factor of the wall, limiting wall velocities to $γ\sim 1/α$. Though the bubble walls ca…
Standard electroweak baryogenesis in the context of a first order phase transition is effective in generating the baryon asymmetry of the universe if the broken phase bubbles expand at subsonic speed, so that CP asymmetric currents can diffuse in front of the wall. Here we present a new mechanism for electroweak baryogenesis which operates for supersonic bubble walls. It relies on the formation of small bubbles of the symmetric phase behind the bubble wall, in the broken phase, due to the heating of the plasma as the wall passes by. We apply the mechanism to a model in which the Higgs field is…
We study the dynamics of electroweak bubbles in the scenario of a strong first order inverse electroweak phase transition at the TeV scale involving the global structure of the nonlinear sigma field in the littlest Higgs model with T parity. Employing the one-loop order finite temperature effective potential, we find that the pressure in the symmetric phase i.e., inside the bubble is always greater than that in the asymmetric phase i.e., outside the bubble, so that the bubbles are expanding. By calculating the fluid velocities in the two phases we arrive at the condition of a supersonic deflag…
In extensions of the Standard Model with SU(2) singlet scalar fields, there can be regions of parameter space for which the electroweak phase transition is first order already at the mean-field level of analysis. We show that in this case the phase interface (bubble wall) can become ultra-relativistic, with the relativistic gamma factor gamma = (1-v_{wall}^2)^{-1/2} growing linearly with the wall's propagation distance. We provide a simple criterion for determining whether the bubble wall "runs away" in this way or if gamma approaches a terminal value.
We discuss the dynamics of expanding bubble walls in the presence of massive dark photons whose mass changes as they cross the wall. For sufficiently thin walls, we show that there exists a transient kinematic regime characterized by a constant reflection probability of longitudinal -- but not transverse -- modes. This effect can have important implications for the dynamics of expanding vacuum bubbles in the early Universe. Most notably, it leads to a new source of pressure on the expanding interface, featuring a non-monotonic dependence on the $γ$-factor of the bubble walls and reaching a pea…
We perform large-scale real-time simulations of a bubble wall sweeping through an out-of-equilibrium plasma. The scenario we have in mind is the electroweak phase transition, which may be first order in extensions of the Standard Model, and produce such bubbles. The process may be responsible for baryogenesis and can generate a background of primordial cosmological gravitational waves. We study thermodynamic features of the plasma near the advancing wall, the generation of Chern-Simons number/Higgs winding number and consider the potential for CP-violation at the wall generating a baryon asymm…
We present an entirely analytic, leading log order determination of the friction an electroweak bubble wall feels during a first order electroweak phase transition. The friction is dominated by W bosons, and gives a wall velocity parametrically ~ alpha_w, and numerically small, ~ .01 -- 0.1 depending on the Higgs mass.
Kobe University（神户大学）；Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交大凌波书院）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）
The cosmological electroweak phase transition can be strongly first order in extended particle physics models. To accurately predict the speed and shape of the bubble walls during such a transition, Boltzmann equations for the CP-even fluid perturbations must be solved. We point out that the equations usually adopted lead to unphysical behavior of the perturbations, for walls traveling close to or above the speed of sound in the plasma. This is an artifact that can be overcome by more carefully truncating the full Boltzmann equation. We present an improved set of fluid equations, suitable for …
In a weakly first order phase transition the typical scale of a subcritical bubble calculated in our previous papers turned out to be too small. At this scale quantum fluctuations may dominate and our previous classical result may be altered. So we examine the critical size of a subcritical bubble where quantum-to-classical transition occurs through quantum decoherence. We show that this critical size is almost equal to the typical scale which we previously obtained.
Bubbles in a first-order electroweak phase transition are nucleated with radii $R_0$ and expand with velocity $v$. If $v$ is subsonic, a bubble becomes unstable to non-spherical perturbations when its radius is roughly $10^4\, R_0$. These perturbations accelerate the transition, and the effective velocity of bubble growth rapidly becomes supersonic. The transition should subsequently proceed spherically via detonation. If for some reason the onset of detonation is postponed, the surface area of the bubbles may be enhanced by $10^5$. We discuss consequences for electroweak baryogenesis.
A model that gives rise to vacuum bubbles is considered where the domain wall field interacts with another real scalar field, resulting in the formation of domain ribbons within the host domain wall. Ribbon-antiribbon annihilations produce elementary bosons whose mass inside the wall is different from the mass in vacuum. Two cases are considered, where the bosons get trapped either within the bubble wall or the bosons get trapped within the vacuum enclosed by the bubble. The bosonic (meta)stabilization effect on the bubble is examined in each case. It is found that when the bosons become trapp…
The bubble wall velocity is essential for the phase transition dynamics in the early universe and its cosmological implications, such as the energy budget of phase transition gravitational wave and electroweak baryogenesis. One key factor to determine the wall velocity is the collision term that quantifies the interactions between the massive particles in the plasma and the bubble wall. We improve the calculations of the collision term beyond the leading-log approximation, and further obtain more precise bubble wall velocity for a representative effective model.
The electroweak phase transition, if proceeding through nucleation and growth of bubbles, should generate large scale turbulent flow, which in turn generates magnetic turbulence and hence magnetic fields on the scale of turbulent flow. We discuss the seeding of this turbulent field by the motion of the dipole charge layers in the phase transition bubble walls, and estimate the strength of the produced fields.
Assuming that the electroweak and QCD phase transitions are first order, upon supercooling, bubbles of the new phase appear. These bubbles grow to macroscopic sizes compared to the natural scales associated with the Compton wavelengths of particle excitations. They propagate by burning the old phase into the new phase at the surface of the bubble. We study the hydrodynamic stability of the burning and find that for the velocities of interest for cosmology in the electroweak phase transition, the shape of the bubble wall is stable under hydrodynamic perturbations. Bubbles formed in the cosmolog…
We discuss aspects of poor infrared behaviour of the perturbation expansion for the effective potential of the Higgs mode near the electroweak phase transition, and enlarge on the discovery that higher order effects weaken the transition. In addition, we outline our recent attempts at understanding the dynamics involved in the propagation of bubbles formed in the first order transition.
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 $Δ\mathcal{P}/\ma…
The electroweak baryogenesis depends on the profile of the CP-violating bubble wall created at the first order phase transition. We attempt to determine it by solving the coupled equations of motion for the moduli and phases of the two Higgs doublets at the transition temperature. A variety of CP-violating bubble walls are classified by boundary conditions. We point out that a sufficiently small explicit CP violation gives nonperturbative effects to yield the baryon asymmetry of the universe.
We study statistical relationships between bubble walls in cosmological first-order phase transitions. We consider the conditional and joint probabilities for different points on the walls to remain uncollided at given times. We use these results to discuss space and time correlations of bubble walls and their relevance for the consequences of the transition. In our statistical treatment, the kinematics of bubble nucleation and growth is characterized by the nucleation rate and the wall velocity as functions of time. We obtain general expressions in terms of these two quantities, and we consid…
We derive a general quantum field theoretic formula for the force acting on expanding bubbles of a first order phase transition in the early Universe setting. In the thermodynamic limit the force is proportional to the entropy increase across the bubble of active species that exert a force on the bubble interface. When local thermal equilibrium is attained, we find a strong friction force which grows as the Lorentz factor squared, such that the bubbles quickly reach stationary state and cannot run away. We also study an opposite case when scatterings are negligible across the wall (ballistic l…
We present semi-analytic techniques for finding bubble wall profiles during first order phase transitions with multiple scalar fields. Our method involves reducing the problem to an equation with a single field, finding an analytic solution and perturbing around it. The perturbations can be written in a semi-analytic form. We argue that our technique lacks convergence problems and demonstrate the speed of convergence on an example potential.
For a cosmological first-order electroweak phase transition, requiring no sphaleron washout of baryon number violating processes leads to a lower bound on the strength of the transition. The velocity of the boundary between the phases, the so-called bubble wall, can become ultra-relativistic if the friction due to the plasma of particles is not sufficient to retard the wall's acceleration. This bubble ``runaway'' should not occur if a successful baryon asymmetry generation due to the transition is required. Using Boedeker-Moore criterion for bubble wall runaway, within the context of an extens…
The dynamical growth rate of bubbles nucleating in relativistic plasma in thermal first-order phase transitions is analyzed. The framework is a hydrodynamical model which consists of relativistic fluid and an order parameter field. The results of analytical approximations and numerical simulations coincide well.
We investigate the motion of fermions in the presence of an electro\-weak phase transition bubble wall. We derive and solve the Dirac equation for such fer\-mions, and compute the transmission and reflection coefficients for fermions traveling from the symmetric to the asymmetric phases separated by the domain wall.
We comprehensively study the effects of bubble wall thickness and speed on the gravitational wave emission spectrum of collisions of two vacuum bubbles. We numerically simulate a large dynamical range, making use of symmetry to reduce the dimensionality. The high-frequency slope of the gravitational wave spectrum is shown to depend on the thickness of the bubble wall, becoming steeper for thick-wall bubbles, in agreement with recent fully 3+1 dimensional lattice simulations of many-bubble collisions. This dependence is present, even for highly relativistic bubble wall collisions. We use the re…
We compute the net electric current generated during a first order electroweak phase transition when fermions transit from the false to the true vacuum. This current is generated by the CP-violating fermion interaction with the Higgs during the phase transition and is quantified in terms of a CP-violating phase in the bubble wall separating the symmetric from the symmetry-broken phases. We comment on the seed magnetic field that this current is able to generate and it is possible implications for magnetogenesis in the early universe during the electroweak phase transition.
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 e…
We present a general method for computing the gravitational radiation arising from the motion of bubble walls or thin fluid shells in cosmological phase transitions. We discuss the application of this method to different wall kinematics. In particular, we derive general expressions for the bubble collision mechanism in the envelope approximation and the so-called bulk flow model, and we also consider deformations from the spherical bubble shape. We calculate the gravitational wave spectrum for a specific model of deformations on a definite size scale, which gives a peak away from that of the b…
We compute the wall velocity in the MSSM. We therefore generalize the SM equations of motion for bubble walls moving through a hot plasma at the electroweak phase transition and calculate the friction terms which describe the viscosity of the plasma. We give the general expressions and apply them to a simple model where stops, tops and W bosons contribute to the friction. In a wide range of parameters including those which fulfil the requirements of baryogenesis we find a wall velocity of order v = 0.05-0.1 much below the SM value.
We consider the role played by subcritical bubbles during the electroweak phase transition, estimate their average size, amplitude and formation rate taking into account the crucial role played by thermalization. We also study the influence of subcritical bubbles on the formation of critical bubbles in the thin wall regime and show that, contrary to some recent claims, subcritical bubbles do not affect the nucleation of critical bubbles in an appreciable way. From this fact we conclude that the electroweak baryogenesis scenarios associated with a first order electroweak phase transition still …
We analyze Higgs condensate bubble expansion during a first-order electroweak phase transition in the early Universe. The interaction of particles with the bubble wall can be accompanied by the emission of multiple soft gauge bosons. When computed at fixed order in perturbation theory, this process exhibits large logarithmic enhancements which must be resummed to all orders when the wall velocity is large. We perform this resummation both analytically and numerically at leading logarithmic accuracy. The numerical simulation is achieved by means of a particle shower in the broken phase of the e…
We consider non-perturbative solutions of the Weinberg-Salam model at finite temperature. We employ an effective temperature-dependent potential yielding a first order phase transition. In the region of the phase transition, there exist two kinds of static, spherically symmetric solutions: sphalerons and bubbles. We analyze these solutions as functions of temperature. We consider the most general spherically symmetric fluctuations about the two solutions and construct the discrete modes in the region of the phase transition. Sphalerons and bubbles both possess a single unstable mode. We presen…
The cosmological remnants of a first-order phase transition generally depend on the perturbations that the walls of expanding bubbles originate in the plasma. Several of the formation mechanisms occur when bubbles collide and lose their spherical symmetry. However, spherical bubbles are often considered in the literature, in particular for the calculation of gravitational waves. We study the steady state motion of bubble walls for different bubble symmetries. Using the bag equation of state, we discuss the propagation of phase transition fronts as detonations and subsonic or supersonic deflagr…
We calculate the velocity and thickness of a bubble wall at the electroweak phase transition in the Minimal Standard Model. We model the wall with semiclassical equations of motion and show that friction arises from the deviation of massive particle populations from thermal equilibrium. We treat these with Boltzmann equations in a fluid approximation in the background of the wall. Our analysis improves on the previous work by using the two loop effective potential, accounting for particle transport, and determining the wall thickness dynamically. We find that the wall is significantly thicker …
Baryogenesis at the electroweak scale depends on divers but identifiable details of bubble wall dynamics and the particle physics. We show that inclusion of the dynamics of relative phase in two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) enhances the adiabatic order of the mechanism proposed by McLerran-Shaposhnikov-Turok-Voloshin where the scalar-scalar-vector triangle diagram with top quark in the loop gives rise to a significant contribution to the effective chemical potential biasing the Chern-Simons number. We also show that in 2HDM with less stringent constraints on Yukawa couplings than those imposed b…
The first order phase transition proceeds via nucleation and growth of true vacuum bubbles. When charged particles collide with the bubble they could radiate electromagnetic wave. We show that, due to an energy loss of the particles by the radiation, the damping pressure acting on the bubble wall depends on the velocity of the wall even in a thermal equilibrium state.
In any scenario of the electroweak baryogenesis, the profile of the CP violating bubble wall, created at the first-order phase transition, plays an essential role. We attempt to determine it by solving the equations of motion for the scalars in the two-Higgs-doublet model at the transition temperature. According to the parameters in the potential, we found three solutions. Two of them smoothly connect the CP-violating broken phase and the symmetric phase, while the other connects CP-conserving vacua but violates CP in the intermediate region. We also estimate the chiral charge flux, which will…
By treating CP-violating interaction as a perturbative term, we solve the Dirac equation in the background of electroweak bubble wall (the distorted wave Born approximation). We obtain the transmission and reflection coefficients for a chiral fermion incident from the symmetric-phase region and for the one from the broken-phase region respectively. There hold the respective sets of unitarity relations and also reciprocity relations among them. These relations enable us to rigorously derive quantum-number flux through the bubble wall, which is the first order quantity of the CP violation. The f…
A general prescription to solve the Dirac equation in the presence of CP-violating electroweak bubble wall is presented. The profile of the bubble wall is not specified except that the wall height is $m_0$ and zero deep in the broken- and the symmetric-phase regions, respectively, where $m_0$ is a fermion mass given by the Higgs-vacuum-expectation value and the Yukawa coupling. The CP-violating effects are evaluated by regarding CP-violating part of the bubble wall as a perturbation to CP-conserving solutions. The basic quantity, $R_{R\rightarrow L}-\bar R_{R\rightarrow L}$, which would contri…
It is widely believed that electroweak baryogenesis should be suppressed in strong phase transitions with fast-moving bubble walls, but this effect has never been quantitatively studied. We rederive fluid equations describing transport of particle asymmetries near the bubble wall without making the small-wall-velocity approximation. We show that the suppression of the baryon asymmetry is a smooth function of the wall speed and that there is no special behavior when crossing the sound speed barrier. Electroweak baryogenesis can thus be efficient also with strong detonations, generically associa…
The terminal wall velocity of a first-order phase transition bubble can be calculated from a set of fluid equations describing the scalar fields and the plasma's state. We rederive these equations from the energy-momentum tensor conservation and the Boltzmann equation, without linearizing in the background temperature and fluid velocity. The resulting equations have a finite solution for any wall velocity. We propose a spectral method to integrate the Boltzmann equation, which is simple, efficient and accurate. As an example, we apply this new methodology to the singlet scalar extension of the…
We study the velocity of bubble walls in the electroweak phase transition. For several extensions of the Standard Model, we estimate the friction and calculate the wall velocity, taking into account the hydrodynamics. We find that deflagrations are generally more likely than detonations. Nevertheless, for models with extra bosons, which give a strongly first-order phase transition, the deflagration velocity is in general quite high, $0.1\lesssim v_w\lesssim 0.6$. Therefore, such phase transitions may produce an important signal of gravitational waves. On the other hand, models with extra fermi…
