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Abstract |
Although in the Standard Model the electroweak phase transition is a
crossover, many well-motivated extensions can generate a first-order
phase transition at the electroweak scale. For a sufficiently strong
phase transition, LISA would be able to observe gravitational waves
sourced by plasma motion generated by expanding and colliding bubbles.
While numerical simulations have examined ‘weak’ and ‘intermediate’
strength phase transitions, we conduct the first 3-dimensional
simulations of strong first-order thermal phase transitions in the early
Universe. We examine two types of transition, deflagrations and
detonations. Detonations in strong transitions behave similarly to their
weak and intermediate counterparts. In deflagrations, substantial
vorticity is generated, hot droplets form, and the gravitational wave
signal is reduced compared to previous models. |
