Gravitational waves from bubble walls

Abstract

We present a general method for computing the gravitational radiation arising from the motion of bubble walls or thin fluid shells in cosmological phase transitions. We discuss the application of this method to different wall kinematics. In particular, we derive general expressions for the bubble collision mechanism in the envelope approximation and the so-called bulk flow model, and we also consider deformations from the spherical bubble shape. We calculate the gravitational wave spectrum for a specific model of deformations on a definite size scale, which gives a peak away from that of the bubble collision mechanism.