New calculation of collision integrals for cosmological phase transitions

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università della Calabria, I-87036 Arcavacata di Rende, Cosenza, Italy
² INFN, Gruppo Collegato di Cosenza, Arcavacata di Rende, I-87036, Cosenza, Italy
³ INFN Sezione di Firenze and Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Firenze, Via G. Sansone 1, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
⁴ IFAE and BIST, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

^* e-mail: carlo.branchina@unical.it
^** e-mail: angela.conaci@unical.it
^*** e-mail: stefania.decurtis@fi.infn.it
^**** e-mail: luigi.dellerose@unical.it
^† e-mail: andrea.guiggiani@unifi.it
^‡ e-mail: agil@ifae.es
^§ e-mail: giuliano.panico@unifi.it

Published online: 10 December 2024

Abstract

First order phase transitions in the early universe may have left a variety of experimentally accessible imprints. The dynamics of such transitions is governed by the density perturbations caused by the propagation of the bubble wall in the false vacuum plasma, conveniently described by a Boltzmann equation. The determination of the bubble wall expansion velocity is crucial to determine the experimental signatures of the transition. We report on the first full (numerical) solution to the Boltzmann equation. Differently from traditional ones, our approach does not rely on any ansatz. The results significantly differ from the ones obtained within the fluid approximation and large differences for the friction acting on the bubble wall are found. The wall velocity is calculated in a singlet extension of the Standard Model, including out-of-equilibrium contributions from both the top quark and the electroweak gauge bosons.