Strong and Electro-Weak Matter 2026

Session

Early Universe Plenary 2

20 Aug 2026, 09:00

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

Conveners

Early Universe Plenary 2

• Mark Hindmarsh (University of Helsinki, University of Sussex)

8. Precise predictions for cosmological phase transitions

Bogumila Swiezewska

20/08/2026, 09:00

Early universe physics, inflation, electroweak phase transitions, and sources for gravitational waves

talk (plenary, 45min)

In this talk, I will review the recent progress in formulating precise predictions for cosmological phase transitions and the resulting gravitational waves. I will focus on the thermal corrections to the effective action and on the treatment of the bubble nucleation rate. I will highlight the results for supercooled phase transitions, which generically yield strong gravitational-wave signals....

3. Slow bubbles from a hot plasma: droplets and other heating effects

Dr Simone Blasi (DESY)

20/08/2026, 09:45

Early universe physics, inflation, electroweak phase transitions, and sources for gravitational waves

talk (plenary, 45min)

The bubble wall velocity is a key parameter controlling the phenomenology of first-order phase transitions, including the emission of gravitational waves. In this talk, I will discuss how the heating of the primordial plasma around the time of percolation can strongly reduce the velocity of the bubble walls that are still expanding. Such slow-down, first observed in numerical simulations, has...