Dynamics of bubble walls at the electroweak phase transition

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of the plasma dynamics during the electroweak phase transition, providing new insights into bubble wall behavior and particle distributions without relying on traditional assumptions.

Contribution

It offers the first full numerical solution to the linearized Boltzmann equation for top quarks coupled to the Higgs during the electroweak phase transition, avoiding ansatz-based approximations.

Findings

Provides detailed non-equilibrium distribution functions of top quarks.

Shows how plasma density perturbations influence bubble wall dynamics.

Offers a new framework for studying phase transition-related phenomena.

Abstract

First order phase transitions in the early universe naturally lead to the production of a stochastic background of gravitational waves and to the generation of a matter-antimatter asymmetry. The dynamics of the phase transition is affected by the density perturbations in the hot plasma. We address this topic by providing, for the first time, a full numerical solution to the linearized Boltzmann equation for the top quark species coupled to the Higgs field during a first order phase transition at the electroweak scale. Differently from the traditional approaches, our results do not depend on any ansatz and can fully describe the non-equilibrium distribution functions of the particle species in the plasma.