Boiling After the Dust Settles: Constraining First-Order Phase Transitions During Dark Energy Domination
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866912576811565056 |
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| author | Koren, Seth Tsai, Yuhsin Wang, Runqing |
| author_facet | Koren, Seth Tsai, Yuhsin Wang, Runqing |
| contents | A first-order phase transition could occur in the late universe when vacuum energy begins dominating the energy density ($z \lesssim 0.3$) and convert some latent heat into other forms such as invisible radiation. This generic possibility also has concrete motivation in particle physics models which invoke a multitude of vacua to address theoretical puzzles. The naïve constraint on such an event comes from measurements of the Hubble expansion rate, but this can only probe transitions involving $\mathcal{O}(10)\%$ of the dark energy. In this work, we show that significantly tighter constraints appear when accounting for phase transition fluctuations affecting CMB photon propagation anisotropically, akin to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. For instance, if a completed phase transition has $β/H_\star\lesssim 25$, current CMB data limits the associated vacuum energy released to less than $1\%$ of the dark energy. A transition to negative vacuum energy (quasi-anti-de Sitter) is allowed only for $β/H_\star \gtrsim 300$. For $β/H_\star \lesssim 500$, the universe will not crunch for at least $14$ Gyr. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_07076 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Boiling After the Dust Settles: Constraining First-Order Phase Transitions During Dark Energy Domination Koren, Seth Tsai, Yuhsin Wang, Runqing High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics A first-order phase transition could occur in the late universe when vacuum energy begins dominating the energy density ($z \lesssim 0.3$) and convert some latent heat into other forms such as invisible radiation. This generic possibility also has concrete motivation in particle physics models which invoke a multitude of vacua to address theoretical puzzles. The naïve constraint on such an event comes from measurements of the Hubble expansion rate, but this can only probe transitions involving $\mathcal{O}(10)\%$ of the dark energy. In this work, we show that significantly tighter constraints appear when accounting for phase transition fluctuations affecting CMB photon propagation anisotropically, akin to the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. For instance, if a completed phase transition has $β/H_\star\lesssim 25$, current CMB data limits the associated vacuum energy released to less than $1\%$ of the dark energy. A transition to negative vacuum energy (quasi-anti-de Sitter) is allowed only for $β/H_\star \gtrsim 300$. For $β/H_\star \lesssim 500$, the universe will not crunch for at least $14$ Gyr. |
| title | Boiling After the Dust Settles: Constraining First-Order Phase Transitions During Dark Energy Domination |
| topic | High Energy Physics - Phenomenology Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07076 |