IFIMAR 20926
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES FISICAS DE MAR DEL PLATA
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Hydrodynamics of phase transition fronts and the speed of sound in the plasma
Autor/es:
LEONARDO LEITAO; ARIEL MÉGEVAND
Revista:
NUCLEAR PHYSICS B
Editorial:
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Referencias:
Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2014 vol. 891 p. 159 - 199
ISSN:
0550-3213
Resumen:
The growth of bubbles in cosmological first-order phase transitions involves nontrivial hydrodynamics. For that reason, the study of the propagation of phase transition fronts often requires several approximations. A frequently used approximation consists in describing the two phases as being composed only of radiation and vacuum energy (the so-called bag equation of state). We show that, in realistic models, the speed of sound in the low-temperature phase is generally smaller than that of radiation, and we study the hydrodynamics in such a situation. We find in particular that a new kind of hydrodynamical solution may be possible, which does not arise in the bag model. We obtain analytic results for the efficiency of the transfer of latent heat to bulk motions of the plasma, as a function of the speed of sound in each phase.
