Gravity Waves from a Cosmological Phase Transition: Gauge Artifacts and Daisy Resummations

Abstract

The finite-temperature effective potential customarily employed to describe the physics of cosmological phase transitions often relies on specific gauge choices, and is manifestly not gauge-invariant at finite order in its perturbative expansion. As a result, quantities relevant for the calculation of the spectrum of stochastic gravity waves resulting from bubble collisions in first-order phase transitions are also not gauge-invariant. We assess the quantitative impact of this gauge-dependence on key quantities entering predictions for gravity waves from first order cosmological phase transitions. We resort to a simple abelian Higgs model, and discuss the case of R_xi gauges. By comparing with results obtained using a gauge-invariant Hamiltonian formalism, we show that the choice of gauge can have a dramatic effect on theoretical predictions for the normalization and shape of the expected gravity wave spectrum. We also analyze the impact of resumming higher-order contributions as needed to maintain the validity of the perturbative expansion, and show that doing so can suppress the amplitude of the spectrum by an order of magnitude or more. We comment on open issues and possible strategies for carrying out "daisy resummed" gauge invariant computations in non-Abelian models for which a gauge-invariant Hamiltonian formalism is not presently available.

25 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (33)

• Gravitational Wave Experiments and Early Universe Cosmology
• Gravitational Radiation from First-Order Phase Transitions
• Is There a Hot Electroweak Phase Transition at $m_H\gsim m_W$?
• The Effective Potential and First-Order Phase Transitions: Beyond Leading Order
• Gravitational Wave Production by Collisions: More Bubbles
• Singlet Higgs Phenomenology and the Electroweak Phase Transition
• Resummation in a Hot Scalar Field Theory
• Opening the Window for Electroweak Baryogenesis
• General Properties of the Gravitational Wave Spectrum from Phase Transitions
• Gravitational Waves from Electroweak Phase Transitions
• Dynamics of Non-renormalizable Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
• The Spectrum of Gravitational Radiation from Primordial Turbulence
• The Baryogenesis Window in the MSSM
• Searching for a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves with LIGO
• Resonant Relaxation in Electroweak Baryogenesis
• The endpoint of the first-order phase transition of the SU(2) gauge-Higgs model on a 4-dimensional isotropic lattice
• Detectability of Gravitational Waves from Phase Transitions
• Electroweak Baryogenesis in a Supersymmetric U(1)' Model
• From laboratory experiments to LISA Pathfinder: achieving LISA geodesic motion
• MSSM Baryogenesis and Electric Dipole Moments: An Update on the Phenomenology
• Gauge independence of the bubble nucleation rate in theories with radiative symmetry breaking
• Quantum Fluctuations around the Electroweak Sphaleron
• Electroweak phase transition, critical bubbles and sphaleron decoupling condition in the MSSM
• Gauge Dependence of the High-Temperature 2-Loop Effective Potential for the Higgs Field
• Electroweak Phase Transition in the munuSSM
• Quantum fluctuations of the electroweak sphaleron: Erratum and Addendum
• Yukawa Interactions and Supersymmetric Electroweak Baryogenesis
• Supergauge interactions and electroweak baryogenesis
• Semi-Analytic Calculation of the Gravitational Wave Signal From the Electroweak Phase Transition for General Quartic Scalar Effective Potentials
• The gauge invariant effective potential: equilibrium and non-equilibrium aspects
• Electroweak phase transitions in the secluded U(1)-prime-extended MSSM
• Gauss's law and gauge-invariant operators and states in QCD
• Electroweak phase transition in an extension of the Standard Model with scalar color octet

Cited by in corpus (47)

• Electroweak baryogenesis
• CosmoTransitions: Computing Cosmological Phase Transition Temperatures and Bubble Profiles with Multiple Fields
• Cosmological phase transitions: from perturbative particle physics to gravitational waves
• Theoretical uncertainties for cosmological first-order phase transitions
• Complex Scalar Singlet Dark Matter: Vacuum Stability and Phenomenology
• Phase Transitions in an Expanding Universe: Stochastic Gravitational Waves in Standard and Non-Standard Histories
• Quantum Transport and Electroweak Baryogenesis
• Probing the Electroweak Phase Transition with Higgs Factories and Gravitational Waves
• Scale Invariant Instantons and the Complete Lifetime of the Standard Model
• Updated predictions for gravitational waves produced in a strongly supercooled phase transition
• Consistent Use of the Standard Model Effective Potential
• Gravitational waves from bubble dynamics: Beyond the Envelope
• Dark Matter as the Trigger of Strong Electroweak Phase Transition
• Consistent Use of Effective Potentials
• The CP-Violating 2HDM in Light of a Strong First Order Electroweak Phase Transition and Implications for Higgs Pair Production
• On the gauge dependence of vacuum transitions at finite temperature
• Cosmological Phase Transitions and their Properties in the NMSSM
• A new insight into the phase transition in the early Universe with two Higgs doublets
• Gravitational waves from conformal symmetry breaking
• Gravitational waves from the electroweak phase transition
• Fingerprinting models of first-order phase transitions by the synergy between collider and gravitational-wave experiments
• Gravitational waves at aLIGO and vacuum stability with a scalar singlet extension of the Standard Model
• Gravitational waves from a very strong electroweak phase transition
• The trap in the early Universe: impact on the interplay between gravitational waves and LHC physics in the 2HDM
• On gauge dependence of gravitational waves from a first-order phase transition in classical scale-invariant $U(1{)}^{\prime }$ models
• First-order electroweak phase transition in a complex singlet model with ${\mathbb{Z}}_3$ symmetry
• Is Higgs Inflation Dead?
• Electroweak Phase Transition in Non-Minimal Higgs Sectors
• Phase Transitions and Gauge Artifacts in an Abelian Higgs Plus Singlet Model
• Gravitational Waves, Bubble Profile, and Baryon Asymmetry in the Complex 2HDM
• Leptogenesis and Dark Matter Through Relativistic Bubble Walls with Observable Gravitational Waves
• Magnetic Fields at First Order Phase Transition: A Threat to Electroweak Baryogenesis
• Phase Transitions in Twin Higgs Models
• Probing multi-step electroweak phase transition with multi-peaked primordial gravitational waves spectra
• Gravitational Wave Imprints of Left-Right Symmetric Model with Minimal Higgs Sector
• Searching for Heavy Leptophilic $Z^{\prime }$: from Lepton Colliders to Gravitational Waves
• Observable Gravitational Waves in Minimal Scotogenic Model
• Does zero temperature decide on the nature of the electroweak phase transition?
• Electroweak Baryogenesis And The Fermi Gamma-Ray Line
• Electroweak Phase Transition in a Right-Handed Neutrino Superfield Extended NMSSM
• Disfavouring Electroweak Baryogenesis and a hidden Higgs in a CP-violating Two-Higgs-Doublet Model
• Asymmetric dark matter with a spontaneously broken $U(1{)}^{\prime }$: self-interaction and gravitational waves
• Electroweak Phase Transition in a Dark Sector with CP Violation
• A Strongly First-Order Electroweak Phase Transition from Loryons
• The Lee-Wick Standard Model at Finite Temperature
• Gauge invariance of the vector meson mass in the Coleman-Weinberg model
• Probing Leptophobic Dark Sectors via Gravitational Wave Signatures