Bubble growth and droplet decay in cosmological phase transitions

Abstract

We study spherically symmetric bubble growth and droplet decay in first order cosmological phase transitions, using a numerical code including both the complete hydrodynamics of the problem and a phenomenological model for the microscopic entropy producing mechanism at the phase transition surface. The small-scale effects of finite wall width and surface tension are thus consistently incorporated. We verify the existence of the different hydrodynamical growth modes proposed recently and investigate the problem of a decaying quark droplet in the QCD phase transition. We find that the decaying droplet leaves behind no rarefaction wave, so that any baryon number inhomogeneity generated previously should survive the decay.PACS numbers: 98.80. Cq, 47.75.+f, 95.30.Lz HU- TFT-95-71, HD-THEP-95-52, hep-ph/9512202

Classical field dynamics of the electroweak phase transition

“…Two effects prevent the bubble wall from "running away" and establish its terminal velocity; frictive effects arising from the departure from equilibrium of massive species due to the motion of the wall, and hydrodynamic effects arising from the liberation of latent heat. The hydrodynamic properties of the plasma are dominated by thermal energy particles, which hold almost [35,40,42,43].…”

“…Several authors have considered the problem [34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43], and quite a bit is known. Two effects prevent the bubble wall from "running away" and establish its terminal velocity; frictive effects arising from the departure from equilibrium of massive species due to the motion of the wall, and hydrodynamic effects arising from the liberation of latent heat.…”

Hydrodynamic stability of cosmological quark-hadron phase transitions

“…The terms associated with κ act as an effective friction force at the phase transition surface boundary [9,10].…”

Quark-hadron phase transitions in the viscous early universe

“…The velocity of the supersonic deflagration varies between the sound and light velocities [14]. The small-scale effects of finite wall width and surface tension have been incorporated in a numerical code, also including both the complete hydrodynamics of the problem and a phenomenological model for the microscopic entropy production mechanism at the phase transition surface [15]. The decaying droplets leave behind no rarefaction wave, so that any baryon number inhomogeneity generated previously should survive the decay.…”