Higgsless simulations of cosmological phase transitions and gravitational waves

Understand

First-order cosmological phase transitions in the early Universe source sound waves and, subsequently, a background of stochastic gravitational waves.

• Currently, predictions of these gravitational waves rely heavily on simulations of a Higgs field coupled to the plasma of the early Universe, the former providing the latent heat of the phase transition.
• Numerically, this is a rather demanding task since several length scales enter the dynamics.
• From smallest to largest, these are the thickness of the Higgs interface separating the different phases, the shell thickness of the sound waves, and the average bubble size.