Uncool soft-wall transitions and gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper analyzes phase transitions in warped extra dimension theories with soft-wall geometries, revealing rapid transitions with slight supercooling and gravitational wave signals detectable by future space interferometers.

Contribution

It provides analytical insights into soft-wall phase transitions, showing they complete quickly with minimal supercooling and produce observable gravitational waves.

Findings

Phase transition completes rapidly with high $eta/H$ ratios.

Hot phase exists only above a minimum temperature close to the critical.

Gravitational wave signals are within reach of future space-based detectors.

Abstract

Theories with warped extra dimensions, like the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model, exhibit a holographic phase transition from a hot, deconfined black brane phase to a cool, confined phase. The standard picture of a first-order, strongly supercooled phase transition is expected to change in variations where the extra dimension is smoothly cut off by a soft-wall curvature singularity, as opposed to a hard brane. To understand this situation, we consider a simple ansatz for the warped geometry which allows us to obtain analytical results while maintaining the essential behavior of a soft wall. Unlike RS with the usual Goldberger-Wise stabilization, the hot, black brane phase only exists above a minimum temperature, which is not much smaller than the critical temperature. We explore the dynamics of the phase transition across the range of possibilities for the asymptotic geometry of a soft wall. This involves calculating an effective 4D action for the location of the black brane horizon. Using the effective action, we show that the phase transition completes rapidly ($\beta/H$ of $10^{3\text{-}4}$ is typical) and with only slight supercooling. We compute the resulting gravitational wave signal for a TeV-scale transition, finding that it is accessible to future space-based interferometers.