Droplet collapse during strongly supercooled transitions

Understand

We simulate the decay of isolated, spherically symmetric droplets in a cosmological phase transition.

• It has long been posited that such heated droplets of the metastable state could form, and they have recently been observed in 3D multi-bubble simulations.
• In those simulations, the droplets were associated with a reduction in the wall velocity and a decrease in the kinetic energy of the fluid, with a consequent suppression in the gravitational wave power spectrum.
• In the present work, we track the wall speed and kinetic energy production in isolated droplets and compare them to those found in multi-bubble collisions.