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Lattice study of the critical bubble in the SU(8) deconfinement transition

Kari Rummukainen*, Riikka Seppä†, and David J. Weir‡

  • *Contact author: kari.rummukainen@helsinki.fi
  • †Contact author: riikka.seppa@helsinki.fi
  • ‡Contact author: david.weir@helsinki.fi
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 014515 – Published 22 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tknb-nbmt

Abstract

Strongly coupled theories are of phenomenological interest, for example as dark matter candidates. Theories that can undergo first-order thermal phase transitions are particularly appealing as potential sources of a stochastic gravitational wave background. Determining the expected gravitational wave signal from a first-order phase transition requires accurate information on the bubble nucleation rate, but thus far for strongly coupled models these have relied on semiclassical methods. As a first step toward determining the nucleation rate, in this paper we study the confinement-deconfinement phase transition in a 4D SU(8) pure gauge model, using multicanonical Monte Carlo. Resolving the critical bubble for the first time in a pure Yang-Mills model, we determine the critical bubble probability and compare it to results from thin wall calculations. We also compare the effectiveness of different lattice pseudo-order parameters at resolving the condensation transition between the metastable phase and critical bubble branch, and point out that the choice of order parameter is crucial to accurately resolve the critical configurations.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 014515– Published 22 July, 2026
  • Received 27 April 2026
  • Accepted 22 June 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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