Wednesday
8 May/24
11:30 - 12:30 (Europe/Zurich)

A nonperturbative test of nucleation calculations for strong phase transitions

Where:  

4/2-011 at CERN

Nucleation rate computations are of broad importance in particle physics and cosmology. Previously, these nucleation rates have generally been calculated perturbatively, but those calculations depend on the semiclassical picture of the bubble and its fluctuations, and different orders of perturbative calculation yield very different results. In this talk, I will give you an update on results of our lattice calculations of the nucleation rate. We focused on a real scalar theory with a tree-level potential barrier and performed nonperturbative simulations to determine the nucleation rate, computing a final result extrapolated to the thermodynamic and continuum limits. Although the system in question should be well-described by a complete one-loop perturbative calculation, we find only qualitative agreement with the full perturbative result. Our result motivates further testing of the current nucleation paradigm.