Holographic bubble nucleation in astrophysics or the early universe

A major source of uncertainty in predicting these signals is the nucleation of critical bubbles within the metastable phase. I will begin with a brief introduction, including how this problem is addressed in effective field theory. The talk then features a recent example of bubble nucleation in holography. While perhaps not a realistic model of our own Universe, it permits a complete microscopic construction of the bubbles, which can be compared quantitatively with the effective field theory approach.

Reference: Carlos Hoyos, David Mateos, Wilke van der Schee, and Javier G. Subils, Microscopic Description of Critical Bubbles, arXiv:2601.09787