Resolving the critical bubble in SU(8) deconfinement transition

TL;DR

This paper uses multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations to resolve the critical bubble in a strongly coupled SU(8) gauge model, providing insights into the nucleation rate during a first order deconfinement transition.

Contribution

It demonstrates the feasibility of resolving the critical bubble in a strongly coupled model and calculates its free energy, improving understanding of nucleation in such transitions.

Findings

Critical bubble free energy can be computed in strongly coupled models.

Thin-wall approximation overestimates nucleation rate by a factor of at least e^{10}.

Simulation results provide an upper limit for nucleation rate.

Abstract

Strongly coupled confining models with a first order phase transition present an interesting DM candidate. Near the critical temperature these models are strongly non-perturbative, and the critical bubble nucleation rate has so far only been estimated via approximative methods. As a model of a strong first order deconfinement transition, we simulate 4D SU(8) pure gauge model with multicanonical Monte Carlo. We demonstrate that resolving the critical bubble is possible in a strongly coupled model. We calculate the free energy of a critical bubble, which gives a rough upper limit for the nucleation rate. For the parameter points we investigated, the thin-wall approximation for the critial bubble free energy is off by a factor of 2, overestimating the rate at least by a factor of $e^{10}$.