2024/05/28 by Andreas Ekstedt, Philipp Schicho, Ekstedt, Andreas +3 · 10 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.18349
openalex publication_date 2024/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We complete the perturbative program for equilibrium thermodynamics of cosmological first-order phase transitions by determining the finite-temperature effective potential of gauge-Higgs theories at next-to-next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N4LO). The computation of the three-loop effective potential required to reach this order is extended to generic models in dimensionally reduced effective theories in a companion article. Our N4LO result is the last perturbative order before confinement renders electroweak gauge-Higgs theories non-perturbative at four loops. By contrasting our analysis with non-perturbative lattice results, we find a remarkable agreement. As a direct application for predictions of gravitational waves produced by a first-order transition, our computation provides the final fully perturbative results for the phase transition strength and speed of sound.