• DOI:10.1007/JHEP04(2021)055
• Corpus ID: 221836319

Theoretical uncertainties for cosmological first-order phase transitions

@article{Croon2020TheoreticalUF,
  title={Theoretical uncertainties for cosmological first-order phase transitions},
  author={Djuna Croon and Oliver Gould and Philipp Schicho and Tuomas Tenkanen and Graham White},
  journal={arXiv: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology},
  year={2020}
}

• Djuna Croon, O. Gould, +2 authors G. White
• Published 21 September 2020
• Physics
• arXiv: High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

We critically examine the magnitude of theoretical uncertainties in perturbative calculations of first-order phase transitions, using the Standard Model effective field theory as our guide. In the usual daisy-resummed approach, we find large uncertainties due to renormalisation scale dependence, which amount to two to three orders-of-magnitude uncertainty in the signal-to-noise ratio for gravitational wave experiments, such as LISA. Alternatively, utilising dimensional reduction in a more sophisticated perturbative approach drastically reduces this scale dependence. Further, this approach resolves other thorny problems with daisy resummation: it is gauge invariant which is explicitly demonstrated for the Standard Model, and avoids an uncontrolled derivative expansion in the bubble nucleation rate.