Simulating the Electroweak Phase Transition: Sonification of Bubble Nucleation

Abstract: As an applicaton of sonification, a simulation of the early universe was developed to portray a phase transition that occurred shortly after the Big Bang. The Standard Model of particle physics postulates that a hypothetical particle, the Higgs boson, is responsible for the breaking of the symmetry between the electromagnetic force and the weak force. This phase transition may have been responsible for triggering Baryogenesis, the generation of an abundance of matter over anti-matter. This hypothesis is known as Electroweak Baryogenesis. In this simulation, aspects of bubble nucleation in Standard Model Electroweak Baryogenesis were examined and modeled using Mathematica, and sonified using SuperCollider3. The resulting simulation, which has been used for pedagogical purposes by one of the authors, suggests interesting possibilities for the integration of science and aesthetics as well as auditory perception. The sonification component in particular also had the unexpected benefit of being useful in debugging the Mathematica code.