Coarse-Grained Fluctuation Probabilities in the Standard Model and Subcritical Bubbles

Abstract

We compute systematically the probability for fluctuations of the Higgs field, averaged over a given spatial scale, to exceed a specified value, in the Standard Model. For the particular case of interest of averages over one coherence volume we show that, even in the worst possible case of taking the one-loop improved effective potential parameters, the probability for the field to fluctuate from the symmetric to the asymmetric minimum before the latter becomes stable is very small for Higgs masses of the order of those of the $W$ and $Z$ bosons, whereas the converse is more likely. As such, metastability should be satisfied dynamically at the Electroweak phase transition and its dynamics should therefore proceed by the usual mechanism of bubble nucleation with subcritical fluctuations playing no particularly relevant role in it.

Latex file, 13 pages. 7 figures, available in compressed form by anonymous ftp from ftp://euclid.tp.ph.ic.ac.uk/papers/94-5_38.fig Latex and postscript versions also available at http://euclid.tp.ph.ic.ac.uk/Papers/index.html

References in corpus (14)

• The Effective Potential and First-Order Phase Transitions: Beyond Leading Order
• Towards the Theory of Cosmological Phase Transitions
• Standard Model CP-violation and Baryon asymmetry Part II: Finite Temperature
• Resummation in a Hot Scalar Field Theory
• Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe in the Standard Model
• A Lattice Monte Carlo Study of the Hot Electroweak Phase Transition
• Finite Temperature Effective Potential to Order $g^4,\la^2$ and the Electroweak Phase Transition
• Numerical Simulations and the Strength of the Electroweak Phase Transition
• On Non-Perturbative Effects at the High-Temperature Electroweak Phase Transition
• Some Two-Loop Corrections to the Finite Temperature Effective Potential in the Electroweak Theory
• Critical Behavior in the Electroweak Phase Transition
• Kinetics of Sub-Critical Bubbles and the Electroweak Transition
• Parameterization Invariance and the Resolution of the Unitary Gauge Puzzle
• Thermal Fluctuations at Second Order Phase Transitions

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Ginzburg regime and its effects on topological defect formation
• Numerical approach to the onset of the electroweak phase transition
• Probability Distribution Function of the Coarse-grained Scalar Field at Finite Temperature