Prediction of the bubble wall velocity for a large jump in degrees of freedom

Abstract

The bubble expansion velocity is an important parameter in the prediction of gravitational waves from first-order phase transitions. This parameter is difficult to compute, especially in phase transitions in strongly coupled theories. In this work, we present a method to estimate the wall velocity for phase transitions with a large enthalpy jump, valid for weakly and strongly coupled theories. We find that detonations are disfavored in this limit, but wall velocities are not necessarily small. We also investigate the effect of two other features in the equation of state: nonconformal sound speeds and a limited range of temperatures for which the phases exist. We find that the former can increase the wall velocity for a given nucleation temperature, and the latter can restrict the wall velocities to small values. To test our approach, we use holographic phase transitions, which typically display these three features. We find excellent agreement with numerically obtained values of the wall velocity. We also demonstrate that the implications for gravitational waves can be significant.