Can the universe be matter-dominated after a supercooled first-order phase transition?
Henda Mansour, Yann Gouttenoire, Felix Kahlhoefer
hep-ph, astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-07-21
Comments: Prepared for submission to JCAP. 30 pages, 11 figures + appendices
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We show that the answer is generally no, at least not immediately.
Terminology
Abstract
We show that the answer is generally no, at least not immediately. Bubble collisions leave behind a highly inhomogeneous scalar field with persistent relativistic gradients, producing an equation of state between matter and radiation. Using lattice simulations in one, two and three spatial dimensions, we find that the equation of state is controlled by the wall Lorentz factor at collision gamma: walls with larger gamma populate higher-momentum modes and drive the fluid closer to radiation. Matter domination begins only after these modes redshift, at a/a gamma, or after the field thermalises through self-scattering and number-changing processes. This delay has direct implications for gravitational waves, primordial black holes and dark matter production.
Sources
- Electroweak Bubble Wall Speed Limit
- Towards an all-orders calculation of the electroweak bubble wall velocity
- Bubble wall velocity: heavy physics effects
- Friction pressure on relativistic bubble walls
- Quantisation Across Bubble Walls and Friction
- Bubble wall dynamics from nonequilibrium quantum field theory
- Super-cool Dark Matter
- Filtered Dark Matter at a First Order Phase Transition
- Hunting WIMPs with LISA: Correlating dark matter and gravitational wave signals
- Dark matter phase-in: producing feebly-interacting particles after a first-order phase transition
- Natural Cold Baryogenesis from Strongly Interacting Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
- Non-thermal Dark Matter Production from the Electroweak Phase Transition: Multi-TeV WIMPs and "Baby-Zillas"
- On Particle Production from Phase Transition Bubbles
- Aspects of Particle Production from Bubble Dynamics at a First Order Phase Transition
- Nonthermal Heavy Dark Matter from a First-Order Phase Transition
- Bubbletrons: Ultrahigh-Energy Particle Collisions and Heavy Dark Matter at Phase Transitions
- String Fragmentation in Supercooled Confinement and Implications for Dark Matter
- Supercool Composite Dark Matter Beyond 100 TeV
- Dark Matter production from relativistic bubble walls
- Hot and heavy dark matter from a weak scale phase transition
Related papers
- Classification of g-modes for neutron stars with a strong transition: Novel universal relation including slow stable hybrid stars
- Higgsino Dark Matter Interpretation of the LUX-ZEPLIN 248 keV Nuclear-Recoil Event
- A Unified Bogoliubov Approach to Primordial Gravitational Waves: From Inflation to Reheating
- Probing Memory-Burdened Primordial Black Holes with High-Energy Neutrinos
- Enhanced Dark Matter Quantum Sensing via Phase-Space Geometric Interferometry
- Axions as Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Dark Radiation