Strong and Electro-Weak Matter 2026

Preheating after a strongly supercooled phase transition in the early Universe

19 Aug 2026, 12:15

15m

F4050 (4th floor) (University of Helsinki Main Building)

talk (15min) Early universe physics, inflation, electroweak phase transitions, and sources for gravitational waves Early Universe Contributions 1

Speaker

Mateusz Kulejewski (University of Warsaw)

Description

Preheating refers to a well-known set of phenomena, such as tachyonic instability and parametric resonance, associated with the dynamics of a scalar field, typically in the context of post-inflationary reheating. In this talk, I will explore the possibility of preheating-like amplification of fluctuations of a scalar field following a strongly supercooled electroweak first-order phase transition, which, unlike inflation, does not involve a homogeneous inflaton background but instead occurs through nucleation and growth of true-vacuum bubbles against a false vacuum background. I will also discuss the impact of such effects on the evolution of the true vacuum bubbles and their cosmological consequences.