The Sounds of the Little and Big Bangs

Studies on heavy ion collisions have discovered that tiny fireballs of a new phase of matter—quark gluon plasma (QGP)—undergo an explosion, called the Little Bang. In spite of its small size, not only is it well described by hydrodynamics, but even small perturbations on top of the explosion turned out to be well described by hydrodynamical sound modes. The cosmological Big Bang also went through phase transitions, related with Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and electroweak/Higgs symmetry breaking, which are also expected to produce sounds. We discuss their subsequent evolution and hypothetical inverse acoustic cascade, amplifying the amplitude. Ultimately, the collision of two sound waves leads to the formation of one gravity waves. We briefly discuss how these gravity waves can be detected.