Bubble dynamics at the electroweak scale

Abstract: The dynamics of bubbles nucleated during a first-order phase transition is controlled by the non-equilibrium fluctuations generated by the traveling domain wall. An accurate modelling of the out-of-equilibrium properties of the plasma is necessary for the characterization of the phase transition relics, such as the signal of gravitational waves. In this thesis we provide a solution to the Boltzmann equation that describes the plasma fluctuations without imposing any ansatz on the perturbation by devising a new spectral method that leverages on the rotational invariance of the collision operator. This allows for a robust and fast computation of the terminal velocity of the wall. We then compare our results with the previous approaches in the literature finding important quantitative and qualitative differences. We also employ our method to determine the terminal velocity of the wall for two benchmark configurations in the singlet extended Standard Model. We finally assess the impact of different approximations and we find that the most important source of uncertainty is given by the infrared modes of the electroweak gauge bosons.