New calculation of collision integrals for cosmological phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel numerical solution to the Boltzmann equation for bubble wall dynamics during cosmological phase transitions, revealing significant differences from traditional fluid approximation methods and impacting predictions of early universe signatures.

Contribution

It introduces the first full numerical solution to the Boltzmann equation for bubble wall velocity, avoiding traditional ansatz-based approaches and improving accuracy in cosmological transition modeling.

Findings

Significant differences from fluid approximation results.

Lower or higher bubble wall velocities depending on parameters.

Enhanced understanding of friction effects on bubble expansion.

Abstract

First order phase transitions in the early universe may have left a variety of experimentally accessible imprints. The dynamics of such transitions is governed by the density perturbations caused by the propagation of the bubble wall in the false vacuum plasma, conveniently described by a Boltzmann equation. The determination of the bubble wall expansion velocity is crucial to determine the experimental signatures of the transition. We report on the first full (numerical) solution to the Boltzmann equation. Differently from traditional ones, our approach does not rely on any ansatz. The results significantly differ from the ones obtained within the fluid approximation and large differences for the friction acting on the bubble wall are found. The wall velocity is calculated in a singlet extension of the Standard Model, including out-of-equilibrium contributions from both the top quark and the electroweak gauge bosons.