First-order electroweak phase transitions: A nonperturbative update

Abstract

We study first-order electroweak phase transitions nonperturbatively, assuming any particles beyond the Standard Model are sufficiently heavy to be integrated out at the phase transition. Utilizing high temperature dimensional reduction, we perform lattice Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the main quantities characterizing the transition: the critical temperature, the latent heat, the surface tension and the bubble nucleation rate, updating and extending previous lattice studies. We focus on the region where the theory gives first-order phase transitions due to an effective reduction in the Higgs self-coupling and give a detailed comparison with perturbation theory.