Uncool soft-wall phase transitions and gravitational waves

Theories with warped extra dimensions, like the Randall-Sundrum (RS) model, exhibit a holographic phase transition from a hot, deconfined black brane phase to a cool, confined phase. The standard picture of a first-order, strongly supercooled phase transition is expected to change in variations where the extra dimension is smoothly cut off by a soft-wall curvature singularity, as opposed to a hard brane. To understand this situation, we consider a simple ansatz for the warped geometry which allows us to obtain analytical results while maintaining the essential behavior of a soft wall. Unlike RS with the usual Goldberger-Wise stabilization, the hot, black brane phase only exists above a minimum temperature, which is not much smaller than the critical temperature. We explore the dynamics of the phase transition across the range of possibilities for the asymptotic geometry of a soft wall. The phase transition completes rapidly and with only slight supercooling. For a TeV-scale transition, the resulting gravitational wave signal is accessible to future space-based interferometers.