1992/06/17 by J. R. Espinosa, M. Quirós, F. Zwirner · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/0370-2693(92)90129-r
published as Phys.Lett.B291:115-124,1992 · 10 A4 pages, table and figures not included and available (by ordinary mail) upon request, plain LATEX, CERN-TH.6451/92, IEM-FT-56/92
arxiv created 1992/06/17 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The basic tool for the study of the electroweak phase transition is Veff (ϕ,T), the one-loop finite-temperature effective potential, improved by all-loop resummations of the most important infrared contributions. In this paper we perform, as a first step towards a full analysis of the Standard Model case, a detailed study of the effective potential of the scalar theory. We show that subleading corrections to the self-energies lead to spurious terms, linear in the field-dependent mass m(ϕ), in the daisy-improved effective potential. Consistency at subleading order requires the introduction of superdaisy diagrams, which prevent the appearance of linear terms. The resulting Veff(ϕ,T) for the scalar theory hints at a phase transition which is either second-order or very weakly first-order.