Nonperturbative test of nucleation calculations for strong phase transitions

Gould, Oliver; Kormu, Anna; Weir, David J.

Abstract

Nucleation rate computations are of broad importance in particle physics and cosmology. Perturbative calculations are often used to compute the nucleation rate Γ, but these are incomplete. We perform nonperturbative lattice simulations of nucleation in a scalar field theory with a tree- level barrier, computing a final result extrapolated to the thermodynamic and continuum limits. Although the system in question should be well-described by a complete one-loop perturbative calculation, we find only qualitative agreement with the full perturbative result, with a 20% discrepancy in | log Γ|. Our result motivates further testing of the current nucleation paradigm.

Citation

Gould, O., Kormu, A., & Weir, D. J. (2025). Nonperturbative test of nucleation calculations for strong phase transitions. Physical Review D, 111(5), Article L051901. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L051901

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 9, 2025
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 9, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 9, 2025
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Print ISSN: 2470-0010
• Electronic ISSN: 2470-0029
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 111
• Issue: 5
• Article Number: L051901
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L051901
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/33294063
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L051901
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.01876