Gravitational waves from first-order phase transitions (and how they are affected by defects)

by Henrique Rubira

Wednesday 3 May 2023, 11:30 → 13:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

First-order cosmological phase transitions (PTs) in the early Universe source sound waves and, subsequently, a background of stochastic gravitational waves (GWs). In this talk, I will present the Higgsless approach to simulate the plasma dynamics and to predict the stochastic GW spectrum from PTs. I will explain how the Higgsless simulations can produce fully nonlinear results and extend the current predictions to strong PTs, one of the most exciting scenarios to be explored by LISA. Finally, I will discuss two non-conventional scenarios and how they affect the GW spectrum: first-order phase transitions seeded by domain wall networks or by temperature fluctuations.

Rubira_CERN_GWsim_23_05_03.pdf