Speaker
Description
To describe cosmological phase transitions perturbatively, scale hierarchies are required. At finite temperature such a hierarchy is provided naturally for gauge theories. If this hierarchy is not accounted for, uncertainties of phase transition thermodynamic parameters can be large due to infrared sensitivity and slow perturbative convergence faced by scalar bosons.
To reliably describe the phase transition thermodynamics, one can then use this hierarchy and construct a three-dimensional effective theory that systematically includes thermal resummations to all orders. Focusing on generic scalar extensions beyond the Standard Model, I determine their dimensionally reduced theory and the corresponding effective potential using the in-house software package DRalgo [1]. Finally, I present a minimal approach [2] that reconciles both gauge invariance and thermal resummation suitable for precision computations of the thermodynamic parameters of cosmological first-order phase transitions. Finally, I will address the impact of such computational diligence at the level of GW signals.
[1] A. Ekstedt, P. Schicho, and T. V. I. Tenkanen, DRalgo: A package for effective field theory approach for thermal phase transitions, Comput. Phys. Commun. 288, 108725 (2023), [2205.08815].
[2] P. Schicho, T. V. I. Tenkanen, and G. White, Combining thermal resummation and gauge invariance for electroweak phase transition, JHEP 11, 047 (2022), [2203.04284].