Perturbative effective field theory expansions for cosmological phase transitions

Gould, Oliver; Tenkanen, Tuomas V. I.

Abstract

Guided by previous non-perturbative lattice simulations of a two-step electroweak phase transition, we reformulate the perturbative analysis of equilibrium thermodynamics for generic cosmological phase transitions in terms of effective field theory (EFT) expansions. Based on thermal scale hierarchies, we argue that the scale of many interesting phase transitions is in-between the soft and ultrasoft energy scales, which have been the focus of studies utilising high-temperature dimensional reduction. The corresponding EFT expansions provide a handle to control the perturbative expansion, and allow us to avoid spurious infrared divergences, imaginary parts, gauge dependence and renormalisation scale dependence that have plagued previous studies. As a direct application, we present a novel approach to two-step electroweak phase transitions, by constructing separate effective descriptions for two consecutive transitions. Our approach provides simple expressions for effective potentials separately in different phases, a numerically inexpensive method to determine thermodynamics, and significantly improves agreement with the non-perturbative lattice simulations.

Citation

Gould, O., & Tenkanen, T. V. I. (2024). Perturbative effective field theory expansions for cosmological phase transitions. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2024, Article 48. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01%282024%29048

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 20, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jan 10, 2024
• Publication Date: Jan 10, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 24, 2024
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2024
• Article Number: 48
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP01%282024%29048
• Keywords: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/29272832
• Publisher URL: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP01(2024)048