This meeting is password protected, if you are interested in joining, send an email to rebeca.gonzalez.suarez@physics.uu.se
Final PhD seminar
As the early universe expands and cools down, the Higgs field develops a vacuum-expectation-value—breaking the electroweak symmetry. This phase transition might explain the asymmetry between matter and antimatter. It might also generate detectable gravitational waves.
In particle physics we deduce properties of the phase transition by using perturbative methods. But these methods suffer from severe problems such as gauge dependence, infrared divergences, and a breakdown of perturbation theory.
We have developed robust perturbative techniques to deal with the phase transition, and argue that a consistent power-counting is crucial.
In this talk I will discuss how the Higgs mechanism is affected by quantum and thermal fluctuations. I will describe the issues of the perturbative expansion, and how to resolve them. I will also show some numerical calculations performed in the Standard Model.