Particle shells from relativistic bubble walls

Relativistic bubble walls from cosmological phase transitions (PT) necessarily accumulate expanding shells of particles. We systematically characterize shell properties, and identify and calculate the processes that prevent them from free streaming: phase-space saturation effects, out-of-equilibrium 2 → 2 and 3 → 2 shell-shell and shell-bath interactions, and shell interactions with bubble walls. We find that shells do not free stream in scenarios widely studied in the literature, where standard predictions will need to be reevaluated, including those of bubble wall velocities, gravitational waves (GW) and particle production. Our results support the use of bulk-flow GW predictions in all regions where shells free stream, irrespectively of whether or not the latent heat is mostly converted in the scalar field gradient.