Numerical simulations of density perturbation and gravitational wave production from cosmological first-order phase transition

2025/02/27 by Zou, Jintao, Zhu, Zhiqing, Zhao, Zizhuo +1 · 3 citations
#Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.20166

Abstract

We conducted three-dimensional lattice simulations to study the density perturbation and gravitational waves (GWs) during first-order phase transition (FOPT). We find that for phase transition strength α> 1, the forward motion of bubble walls becomes the primary source, whereas for α< 1, the dominant contribution to the density perturbation comes from the delay of vacuum decay. Additionally, the power spectrum of density perturbations generated by the phase transition exhibits a slope of k³ at small wavenumbers and k^-1.5 at large wavenumbers. Furthermore, we calculated the GW power spectra, which exhibit the slope of k³ at small wavenumbers and k^-2 at large wavenumbers. Our numerical simulations confirm that slow PTs can produce PBHs and provide predictions for the GW power spectrum, offering theoretical support for GW detection.

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