Gravitational waves from bubble collisions and fluid motion in strongly supercooled phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper analytically and numerically investigates gravitational wave spectra from strongly supercooled phase transitions, focusing on bubble collisions and fluid motion, and provides updated spectral fits considering efficiency factors.

Contribution

It introduces an analytical derivation of the efficiency factor in the thin-wall approximation and performs numerical simulations to refine gravitational wave spectrum predictions.

Findings

Efficiency factor has minimal impact on spectra.

Spectra can be approximated by a scaled version without the efficiency factor.

Updated fits for spectra depend on source behavior post-collision.

Abstract

We estimate the gravitational wave spectra generated in strongly supercooled phase transitions by bubble collisions and fluid motion. We derive analytically in the thin-wall approximation the efficiency factor that determines the share of the energy released in the transition between the scalar field and the fluid. We perform numerical simulations including the efficiency factor as a function of bubble radius separately for all points on the bubble surfaces to take into account their different collision times. We find that the efficiency factor does not significantly change the gravitational wave spectra and show that the result can be approximated by multiplying the spectrum obtained without the efficiency factor by its value at the radius $R_{\rm eff} \simeq 5/\beta$, where $\beta$ is the approximate inverse duration of the transition. We also provide updated fits for the gravitational wave spectra produced in strongly supercooled transitions from both bubble collisions and fluid motion depending on the behaviour of the sources after the collision.