Gravitational wave generation from bubble collisions in first-order phase transitions: An analytic approach

By C. Caprini, R. Durrer, G. Servant. 2007

246 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gravitational wave production from bubble collisions was calculated in the early nineties using numerical simulations. In this paper, we present an alternative analytic estimate, relying on a different treatment of stochasticity. In our approach, we provide a model for the bubble velocity power spectrum, suitable for both detonations and deflagrations. From this, we derive the anisotropic stress and analytically solve the gravitational wave equation. We provide analytical formulae for the peak frequency and the shape of the spectrum which we compare with numerical estimates. In contrast to the previous analysis, we do not work in the envelope approximation. This paper focuses on a particular source of gravitational waves from phase transitions. In a companion article, we will add together the different sources of gravitational wave signals from phase transitions: bubble collisions, turbulence and magnetic fields and discuss the prospects for probing the electroweak phase transition at LISA.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c9a0877bb6fcd331c2d0f3516fa41f05cabc421b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Caprini
2. T. Konstandin
3. J. No
4. M. Hindmarsh
5. G. Servant
6. R. Durrer
7. Andrii Y. Neronov
8. R. Cai

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. C. Caprini
2. T. Konstandin
3. J. No
4. R. Durrer
5. G. Servant
6. S. Huber
7. Andrii Y. Neronov
8. M. Hindmarsh

Citations in the corpus

• The Gravitational-Wave Physics (2017, result): “The state-of-the-art results of the GWs spectrum from PTs due to colliding bubble walls were settled down in [70], which although disagreed with earlier study [71], they finally achieved consensus in [72].”
• Cosmological Magnetic Fields: Their Generation, Evolution and Observation (2013, background): “This is a typical number found in numerical simulations by Huber and Konstandin (2008), but it depends sensitively on the strength of the phase transition (Caprini et al 2008; Espinosa et al 2010).”
• Gravitational wave production by collisions: more bubbles (2008, methodology): “Even though the stochastic approach in [31] does not require the thin wall approximation, the results are also valid in this limit, such that this approximation cannot be responsible for the different spectra.”
• Gravitational waves from bubble dynamics: beyond the envelope (2017, background): “[84] in the context of GW production from bubble dynamics.”
• Energy budget of cosmological first-order phase transitions (2010, background): “In all numerical calculations of the GW background [4, 5, 10], it has been assumed for simplicity that all the energy was concentrated on the bubble surface and finite thickness effects were ignored (they were instead considered in the analytical approach of [9]).”
• Cosmological backgrounds of gravitational waves and eLISA/NGO: phase transitions, cosmic strings and other sources (2012, unknown): “An attempt to go beyond the envelope approximation and find a result applicable also to the case of deflagrations, where the bulk fluid motions are expected to be extended over a wider region around the bubble wall, has been carried on in Caprini et al. 2008 [24].”
• Reconstructing the spectral shape of a stochastic gravitational wave background with LISA (2019, background): “a kination dominated phase [46–50], non-perturbative particle production phenomena [51–62], oscillon dynamics [63–67], strong first order phase transitions [68–81], or cosmic defect networks [82–93].”
• Some cosmological implications of hidden sectors (2008, background): “When the bubbles finally percolate and collide, this energy is partially released into gravitational waves [22, 23, 24, 25].”
• The stochastic gravitational wave background from turbulence and magnetic fields generated by a first-order phase transition (2009, methodology): “[12], the peak frequency of the GW spectrum from MHD turbulence is larger by about a factor two.”