Supercooling and phase coexistence in cosmological phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamics of first-order cosmological phase transitions, focusing on supercooling, reheating, and phase coexistence, and explores how various parameters influence these processes and their cosmological implications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the thermodynamical constraints and numerical simulations of phase transition dynamics in a Higgs field model, highlighting the effects of different parameters.

Findings

Supercooling duration depends on model parameters.

Reheating and phase coexistence are characterized in the model.

Implications for cosmological outcomes are discussed.

Abstract

Cosmological phase transitions are predicted by Particle Physics models, and have a variety of important cosmological consequences, which depend strongly on the dynamics of the transition. In this work we investigate in detail the general features of the development of a first-order phase transition. We find thermodynamical constraints on some quantities that determine the dynamics, namely, the latent heat, the radiation energy density and the false-vacuum energy density. Using a simple model with a Higgs field, we study numerically the amount and duration of supercooling and the subsequent reheating and phase coexistence. We analyze the dependence of the dynamics on the different parameters of the model, namely, the energy scale, the number of degrees of freedom and the couplings of the scalar field with bosons and fermions. We also inspect the implications for the cosmological outcomes of the phase transition.