Effective field theory approach to thermal bubble nucleation

TL;DR

This paper develops an effective field theory framework to accurately describe thermal bubble nucleation, resolving issues in traditional methods and connecting to classical nucleation theory for improved physical understanding and computational precision.

Contribution

It introduces an effective description for thermal bubble nucleation scales, addressing inconsistencies in the standard formalism and linking to classical nucleation theory via dimensional reduction.

Findings

Resolves inconsistencies in vacuum bounce formalism for thermal nucleation

Provides a computational framework for higher accuracy in nucleation calculations

Demonstrates the method across three different quantum field theories

Abstract

The standard vacuum bounce formalism suffers from inconsistencies when applied to thermal bubble nucleation, for which ad hoc workarounds are commonly adopted. Identifying the length scales on which nucleation takes place, we demonstrate how the construction of an effective description for these scales naturally resolves the problems of the standard vacuum bounce formalism. Further, by utilising high-temperature dimensional reduction, we make a connection to classical nucleation theory. This offers a clear physical picture of thermal bubble nucleation, as well as a computational framework which can then be pushed to higher accuracy. We demonstrate the method for three qualitatively different quantum field theories.