Magnetic field production at a first-order electroweak phase transition

Yiyang Zhang, Tanmay Vachaspati, Francesc Ferrer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the generation of magnetic field seeds during a first-order electroweak phase transition, by numerically evolving the classical equations of motion of the bosonic electroweak theory on the lattice. The onset of the transition is implemented by the random nucleation of bubbles with an arbitrarily oriented Higgs field in the broken phase. We find that about 10% of the latent heat is converted into magnetic energy, with most of the magnetic fields being generated in the last stage of the phase transition when the Higgs oscillates around the true vacuum. The energy spectrum of the magnetic field has a peak that shifts towards larger length scales as the phase transition unfolds. By the end of our runs the peak wavelength is of the order of the bubble percolation scale, or about a third of our lattice size.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number083006
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume100
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 10 2019

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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