Stability of cosmological detonation fronts

• Autores: Membiela, Federico Agustin; Megevand, Ariel Hugo
• Año de publicación: 2014
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: Cosmological Phase Transitions; Relativistic Hydrodynamics; Hydrodynamic Instabilities
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

The steady state propagation of a phase transition front is classified, according to hydrodynamics, as a deflagration or a detonation, depending on its velocity with respect to the fluid. These propagation modes are further divided into three types, namely, weak, Jouguet, and strong solutions, according to their disturbance of the fluid. However, some of these hydrodynamic modes will not be realized in a phase transition. One particular cause is the presence of instabilities. In this work we study the linear stability of weak detonations, which are generally believed to be stable. After discussing in detail the weak detonation solution, we consider small perturbations of the interface and the fluid configuration. When the balance between the driving and friction forces is taken into account, it turns out that there are actually two different kinds of weak detonations, which behave very differently as functions of the parameters. We show that the branch of stronger weak detonations are unstable, except very close to the Jouguet point, where our approach breaks down.
Fil: Membiela, Federico Agustin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Físicas de Mar del Plata; Argentina
Fil: Megevand, Ariel Hugo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Físicas de Mar del Plata; Argentina