Gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions: energy budget and bubble wall velocity
Jorinde van de Vis (Leiden U.)

In many extensions of the Standard Model, the universe underwent one or several first order phase transitions. Such phase transitions proceed via the formation and collision of bubbles. The bubble collisions can source a stochastic gravitational wave background signal. In the case of the electroweak phase transition, the characteristic frequency would fall right in the sensitivity band of LISA. We can thus use data from gravitational wave experiments to probe physics beyond the standard model. In this talk, I will discuss the contribution to the gravitational wave signal from sound waves, which is often the dominant contribution.
Predictions of the gravitational wave spectrum typically rely on hydrodynamic lattice simulations of the scalar-plasma system. Hydrodynamic solutions of a single expanding bubble provide a bridge between the particle physics model and the hydrodynamic lattice simulation and encode much of the underlying particle physics information. Two relevant quantities in this computation are the bubble expansion velocity and the kinetic energy budget. I will discuss the computation of both quantities and present two approximation schemes for computing the wall velocity: the scenario of local thermal equilibrium and of a large enthalpy jump between the two phases.