English

Numerical simulations of density perturbation and gravitational wave production from cosmological first-order phase transition

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-04-13 v4 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We conducted three-dimensional lattice simulations to study the density perturbation and gravitational waves (GWs) during first-order phase transition (FOPT). We find that for phase transition strength α>1\alpha > 1, the forward motion of bubble walls becomes the primary source, whereas for α<1\alpha < 1, the dominant contribution to the density perturbation comes from the delay of vacuum decay. Additionally, the power spectrum of density perturbations generated by the phase transition exhibits a slope of k3k^3 at small wavenumbers and k1.5k^{-1.5} at large wavenumbers. Furthermore, we calculated the GW power spectra, which exhibit the slope of k3k^3 at small wavenumbers and k2k^{-2} at large wavenumbers. Our numerical simulations confirm that slow PTs can produce PBHs and provide predictions for the GW power spectrum, offering theoretical support for GW detection.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.20166,
  title  = {Numerical simulations of density perturbation and gravitational wave production from cosmological first-order phase transition},
  author = {Jintao Zou and Zhiqing Zhu and Zizhuo Zhao and Ligong Bian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.20166},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

14 pages, 13 figures