The study of the hydrodynamics of bubble growth in first-order phase
transitions is very relevant for electroweak baryogenesis, as the baryon
asymmetry depends sensitively on the bubble wall velocity, and also for
predicting the size of the gravity wave signal resulting from bubble
collisions, which depends on both the bubble wall velocity and the plasma fluid
velocity. We perform such study in different bubble expansion regimes, namely
deflagrations, detonations, hybrids (steady states) and runaway solutions
(accelerating wall), without relying on a specific particle physics model. We
compute the efficiency of the transfer of vacuum energy to the bubble wall and
the plasma in all regimes. We clarify the condition determining the runaway
regime and stress that in most models of strong first-order phase transitions
this will modify expectations for the gravity wave signal. Indeed, in this
case, most of the kinetic energy is concentrated in the wall and almost no
turbulent fluid motions are expected since the surrounding fluid is kept mostly
at rest.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figure