BubbleDet: A Python package to compute functional determinants for bubble nucleation

TL;DR

BubbleDet is a Python package that accurately computes one-loop functional determinants for spherically symmetric backgrounds, improving predictions of vacuum decay and bubble nucleation rates relevant to cosmological phase transitions and gravitational wave signals.

Contribution

It introduces the first dedicated Python tool for calculating functional determinants in spherically symmetric backgrounds, applicable to arbitrary scalar potentials and dimensions up to seven.

Findings

Enables precise computation of decay and nucleation rates.

Reduces theoretical uncertainties in gravitational wave predictions.

Supports scalar and gauge field fluctuations.

Abstract

We present a Python package, BubbleDet, for computing one-loop functional determinants around spherically symmetric background fields. This gives the next-to-leading order correction to both the vacuum decay rate, at zero temperature, and to the bubble nucleation rate in first-order phase transitions at finite temperature. For predictions of gravitational wave signals from cosmological phase transitions, this is expected to remove one of the leading sources of theoretical uncertainty. BubbleDet is applicable to arbitrary scalar potentials and in any dimension up to seven. It has methods for fluctuations of scalar fields, including Goldstone bosons, and for gauge fields, but is limited to cases where the determinant factorises into a product of separate determinants, one for each field degree of freedom. To our knowledge, BubbleDet is the first package dedicated to calculating functional determinants in spherically symmetric background