arXiv subjects

Thomas Konstandin

Publications and source records attributed to Thomas Konstandin.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Scalar damping in cosmological phase transitions

We outline how to calculate the scalar damping term during a cosmological phase transition from kinetic theory. We determine the scalar damping rate from top quarks and weak gauge bosons in a Standard Model-like theory. We find that the convergence of the bosonic contributions hinges on how the soft modes are treated. We discuss the validity of the phenomenological friction term employed in hydrodynamical simulations. We find that for a Standard Model particle content, this approximation is (marginally) justified. We also test the hypothesis that the pressure from a runaway wall acts as an upper bound on the pressure from the local friction term. We find that next-to-leading order contributions in terms of velocity and mass are negative and that in the regime of validity, the local damping term indeed cannot surpass the pressure from runaway bubbles.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

Detecting Gravitational-Wave Anisotropies with Simulation-Based Inference

Over the last five years, multiple Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations have reported mounting evidence for a gravitational-wave background (GWB) at nanohertz frequencies. Measuring anisotropies in the sky distribution of the GWB power is one of the most promising ways to identify and characterize its source. These anisotropies are expected to manifest as deviations from the Hellings-Downs (HD) correlations between the timing residuals of different pulsars. Current search strategies include Bayesian methods, which model anisotropies in the timing residuals likelihood, and faster frequentist approaches, which construct correlation estimators from timing residuals and use these to test the isotropic assumption. However, frequentist methods rely on the assumption that correlation estimators are Gaussian-distributed, an assumption that is not justified and that -- as we will show -- severely limits detection sensitivity. In this work, we present a Simulation-Based Inference (SBI) framework that replaces the analytic Gaussian likelihood used in frequentist searches with a neural network classifier trained on synthetic data. This approach captures the non-Gaussian structure of the data and significantly improves performance. Specifically, we find that the probability of $3σ$ detection increases by approximately 90% for single-hotspot scenarios and by 200% for double-hotspot scenarios compared to standard frequentist methods.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

A positive definite formulation of vacuum decay with reduced symmetry

The Euclidean bounce for vacuum decay enjoys an $O(4)$ symmetry that is lost in the presence of impurities than can catalyze the decay. We present a formulation for the calculation of the tunneling decay action, that is explicitly positive definite, for impurities whose effects are spherically symmetric so that the bounce symmetry is reduced to $O(3)$. The action constructed can be regarded as a generalization of the tunneling potential method, which implicitly assumed $O(4)$ symmetry. We show that the action obtained reduces to the tunneling potential for $O(4)$-symmetric cases and provide analytic examples with $O(3)$ symmetry and arbitrary wall thickness.

hep-th↗

arXiv2026

Slow-down of expanding bubbles in the early Universe

We study slow-down effects for bubbles formed in a cosmological first-order phase transition (PT) focusing on deflagrations and hybrids, where the bubble wall is preceded by a shockwave of heated plasma. Slow-down has been observed in multi-bubble simulations together with a suppression of gravitational wave (GW) emission, mostly for slow walls. We study the impact of the shock waves on the wall velocity around percolation, by considering steady-state single-bubble solutions and incorporating the possible heating effects by two different mechanisms. First, we investigate the slow-down experienced by a bubble expanding into an impeding shockwave, where the temperature is higher than at nucleation, and the fluid is no longer at rest. Taking into account such heating and kinematic effects, we find that the most significant slow-down occurs for the fastest walls, and thus cannot explain the suppression of the GWs observed in the simulations. However, these effects are stronger for PTs with a sizeable change in degrees of freedom unlike what is usually implemented in simulations, suggesting that the degrees of freedom can be an important additional parameter for characterizing the GW spectrum. For the second slow-down mechanism, we study heated droplets of false vacuum that shrink towards the end of the PT. By implementing a suitable boundary condition motivated by energy conservation, we show how the droplet velocity, interpreted here as the late-time velocity of the bubble walls, can be predicted from the properties of the initial deflagration/hybrid, in remarkable agreement with numerical simulations. Droplets are found to shrink more slowly for stronger PTs and slower deflagrations, with mild dependence on the change of degrees of freedom. Such slow droplets naturally correlate with a suppression of GWs, while geometrical properties such as the shock width play an important role as well.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

Tuning the violins: dark sector phase transition models for the PTA signal

First-order phase transitions in a dark sector have been invoked as an intriguing possibility to explain the observed stochastic gravitational wave background at nanohertz frequencies. Here we perform a comprehensive study of the generic requirements for such a phase transition to explain the observed signal while being consistent with all relevant constraints. We consider three broad model classes for strong first-order transitions, realised by an Abelian dark Higgs boson, a two-step phase transition involving two scalar singlets, and a conformal scalar field with loop-induced symmetry breaking, respectively. We discuss the tuning that is required to successfully explain the Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) signal in each of these cases, and highlight the underlying physical mechanisms. We conclude that all three scenarios can in principle describe the data, but that conformal models stand out as the most generic, and least tuned, explanation. Future observations by the PTA collaborations and collider experiments will be crucial to test the viability of this hypothesis, and to further narrow in on the model parameters, if the PTA signal is indeed due to a strong first-order phase transition.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

Prospects and Limitations of PTAs Anisotropy Searches -- The Frequentist Case

Recent findings from several Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations point to the existence of a Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) at nanohertz frequencies. A key next step towards characterizing this signal and identifying its origin is to map the sky distribution of its power. Several strategies have been proposed to reconstruct this distribution using PTA data. In this work, we compare these different strategies to determine which one is best suited to detect GWB anisotropies of different topologies. We find that, for both localized and large-scale anisotropies, reconstruction methods based on pixel and radiometer maps are the most promising. However, in both scenarios, even the optimistically large anisotropic signals discussed in this work remain challenging to detect with near-future PTA sensitivities. For example, we find that for a GWB hotspot contributing to $80\%$ of the GWB power in the second frequency bin, detection probabilities reach at most $\mathcal{O}(10\%)$ for a PTA with noise properties comparable with the ones of the upcoming IPTA third data release. Finally, we consider the fundamental limitations that cosmic variance poses to these kinds of searches by deriving the smallest deviations from isotropy that could be detected by an idealized PTA with no experimental or pulsar noise.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Intrinsic non-Gaussianity of ultra slow-roll inflation

We study the non-Gaussian tail of the curvature fluctuation, $ζ$, in an inflationary scenario with a transient ultra slow-roll phase that generates a localized large enhancement of the spectrum of $ζ$. To do so, we implement a numerical procedure that provides the probability distribution of $ζ$ order by order in perturbation theory. The non-Gaussianities of $ζ$ can be shown to arise from its non-linear relation to the inflaton fluctuations and from the intrinsic non-Gaussianities of the latter, which stem from its self interactions. We find that intrinsic non-Gaussianities, which have often been ignored to estimate the abundance of primordial black holes in this kind of scenario, are important. The relevance of the intrinsic contribution depends on the rapidity with which the transient ultra slow-roll phase occurs, as well as on its duration. Our method cannot be used accurately when the perturbative in-in formalism fails to apply, highlighting the relevance of developing fully non-perturbative approaches to the problem.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

The impact of cosmic variance on PTAs anisotropy searches

Several Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) collaborations have recently found evidence for a Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) by measuring the perturbations that this background induces in the time-of-arrivals of pulsar signals. These perturbations are expected to be correlated across different pulsars and, for isotropic GWBs, the expected values of these correlations (obtained by averaging over different GWB realizations) are a simple function of the pulsars' angular separations, known as the Hellings-Downs (HD) correlation function. On the other hand, anisotropic GWBs would induce deviations from these HD correlations in a way that can be used to search for anisotropic distributions of the GWB power. However, even for isotropic GWBs, interference between GW sources radiating at overlapping frequencies induces deviations from the HD correlation pattern, an effect known in the literature as "cosmic variance". In this work, we study the impact of cosmic variance on PTA anisotropy searches. We find that the fluctuations in cross-correlations related to cosmic variance can lead to the miss-classification of isotropic GWBs as anisotropic, leading to a false detection rate of ~50% for frequentist anisotropy searches. We also observe that cosmic variance complicates the reconstruction of the GWB sky map, making it more challenging to resolve bright GW hotspots, like the ones expected to be produced from a Supermassive Black Hole Binaries population. These findings highlight the need to refine anisotropy search techniques to improve our ability to reconstruct the GWB sky map and accurately assess the significance of any isotropy deviations we might find in it.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Gravitational waves from first-order phase transitions: from weak to strong

We study the generation of gravitational waves (GWs) during a cosmological first-order phase transition (PT) using the recently introduced Higgsless approach to numerically simulate the fluid motion induced by the PT. We present for the first time GW spectra sourced by bulk fluid motion in the aftermath of strong first-order PTs ($α= 0.5$), alongside weak ($α= 0.0046$) and intermediate ($α= 0.05$) PTs, previously considered in the literature. We find that, for intermediate and strong PTs, the kinetic energy in our simulations decays, following a power law in time. The decay is potentially determined by non-linear dynamics and hence related to the production of vorticity. We show that the assumption that the source is stationary in time, characteristic of compressional motion in the linear regime (sound waves), agrees with our numerical results for weak PTs, since in this case the kinetic energy does not decay with time. We then provide a theoretical framework that extends the stationary assumption to one that accounts for the time evolution of the source: as a result, the GW energy density is no longer linearly increasing with the source duration, but proportional to the integral over time of the squared kinetic energy fraction. This effectively reduces the linear growth rate of the GW energy density and allows to account for the period of transition from the linear to the non-linear regimes of the fluid perturbations. We validate the novel theoretical model with the results of simulations and provide templates for the GW spectrum for a broad range of PT parameters.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Non-singular solutions to the Boltzmann equation with a fluid Ansatz

Cosmological phase transitions can give rise to intriguing phenomena, such as baryogenesis or a stochastic gravitational wave background, due to nucleation and percolation of vacuum bubbles in the primordial plasma. A key parameter for predicting these relics is the bubble wall velocity, whose computation relies on solving the Boltzmann equations of the various species along the bubble profile. Recently it has been shown that an unphysical singularity emerges if one assumes these local quantities to be described as small fluctuations over a constant equilibrium background. In this work we solve this issue by including the spatial dependence of the background into the fluid Ansatz. This leads to a modification of the Boltzmann equation, and all terms that would give rise to a singularity now vanish. We recalculate the different contributions to the counter-pressure of the plasma on the expanding wall, and discuss their relative importance. The Standard Model with a low cutoff is chosen as benchmark model and the results are shown for different values of the cutoff scale $Λ$. In this setup, deflagration solutions are found for almost all the values of $Λ$ considered, while detonations are found only for some restricted corner of the parameter space.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Non-Gaussian tails without stochastic inflation

We show, both analytically and numerically, that non-Gaussian tails in the probability density function of curvature perturbations arise in ultra-slow-roll inflation from the $δN$ formalism, without invoking stochastic inflation. Previously reported discrepancies between both approaches are a consequence of not correctly accounting for momentum perturbations. Once they are taken into account, both approaches agree to an excellent degree. The shape of the tail depends strongly on the phase space of inflation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Does NANOGrav observe a dark sector phase transition?

Gravitational waves from a first-order cosmological phase transition, at temperatures at the MeV-scale, would arguably be the most exciting explanation of the common red spectrum reported by the NANOGrav collaboration, not the least because this would be direct evidence of physics beyond the standard model. Here we perform a detailed analysis of whether such an interpretation is consistent with constraints on the released energy deriving from big bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background. We find that a phase transition in a completely secluded dark sector is strongly disfavoured with respect to the more conventional astrophysical explanation of the putative gravitational wave signal in terms of supermassive black hole binaries. On the other hand, a phase transition in a dark sector that subsequently decays, before the time of neutrino decoupling, remains an intriguing possibility to explain the data. From the model-building perspective, such an option is easily satisfied for couplings with the visible sector that are small enough to evade current collider and astrophysical constraints. The first indication that could eventually corroborate such an interpretation, once the observed common red spectrum is confirmed as a nHz gravitational wave background, could be the spectral tilt of the signal. In fact, the current data already show a very slight preference for a spectrum that is softer than what is expected from the leading astrophysical explanation.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Asymmetric Matters from a Dark First-Order Phase Transition

We introduce a model for matters-genesis in which both the baryonic and dark matter asymmetries originate from a first-order phase transition in a dark sector with an $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$ gauge group and minimal matter content. In the simplest scenario, we predict that dark matter is a dark antineutron with mass either $m_{\bar{n}} = 1.36$ GeV or $m_{\bar{n}} = 1.63$ GeV. Alternatively, dark matter may be comprised of equal numbers of dark antiprotons and pions. This model, in either scenario, is highly discoverable through both dark matter direct detection and dark photon search experiments. The strong dark matter self interactions may ameliorate small-scale structure problems, while the strongly first-order phase transition may be confirmed at future gravitational wave observatories.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Gravitational waves from defect-driven phase transitions: domain walls

We discuss the gravitational wave spectrum produced by first-order phase transitions seeded by domain wall networks. This setup is important for many two-step phase transitions as seen for example in the singlet extension of the standard model. Whenever the correlation length of the domain wall network is larger than the typical bubble size, this setup leads to a gravitational wave signal that is shifted to lower frequencies and with an enhanced amplitude compared to homogeneous phase transitions without domain walls. We discuss our results in light of the recent PTA hints for gravitational waves.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Higgsless simulations of cosmological phase transitions and gravitational waves

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. In this work, we present an approach to perform Higgsless simulations in three dimensions, producing fully nonlinear results, while at the same time removing the hierarchically smallest scale from the lattice. This significantly reduces the complexity of the problem and contributes to making our approach highly efficient. We provide spectra for the produced gravitational waves for various choices of wall velocity and strength of the phase transition, as well as introduce a fitting function for the spectral shape.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Tunneling Potential Actions from Canonical Transformations

A new formulation for obtaining the tunneling action for vacuum decay based on the so-called tunneling potential was developed recently. In the original derivation, the new action was obtained by requiring that its variation led to the correct equations of motion and the same value for the action as evaluated on the Euclidean bounce. We present an alternative derivation of the tunneling potential action via canonical transformations. We discuss both single-field and multi-field cases as well as the case with gravity. We also comment on the possible application of the new approach to the calculation of the functional determinant prefactor in the tunneling rate.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has two scientific objectives of cosmological focus: to probe the expansion rate of the universe, and to understand stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds and their implications for early universe and particle physics, from the MeV to the Planck scale. However, the range of potential cosmological applications of gravitational wave observations extends well beyond these two objectives. This publication presents a summary of the state of the art in LISA cosmology, theory and methods, and identifies new opportunities to use gravitational wave observations by LISA to probe the universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

A sonic boom in bubble wall friction

We revisit the computation of bubble wall friction during a cosmological first-order phase transition, using an extended fluid Ansatz to solve the linearized Boltzmann equation. A singularity is found in the fluctuations of background species as the wall approaches the speed of sound. Using hydrodynamics, we argue that a discontinuity across the speed of sound is expected on general grounds, which manifests itself as the singularity in the solution of the linearized system. We discuss this result in comparison with alternative approaches proposed recently, which find a regular behaviour of the friction for all velocities.

hep-ph↗