Supercooled Phase Transitions with Radiative Symmetry Breaking

TL;DR

This paper reviews a model-independent perturbative approach to studying supercooled first-order phase transitions with radiative symmetry breaking, relevant for gravitational wave and primordial black hole production.

Contribution

It introduces a general, ready-to-use perturbative framework for analyzing supercooling in symmetry-breaking phase transitions, applicable across various models.

Findings

Provides formulas for effective action in supercooled phase transitions.

Enables model-independent analysis of gravitational wave signals.

Facilitates understanding of primordial black hole formation scenarios.

Abstract

First-order phase transitions produce gravitational waves and primordial black holes. They always occur in field theories where symmetries are radiatively broken and masses are correspondingly generated. These theories predict a period of supercooling: phase transitions become effective at temperatures much smaller than the symmetry-breaking scale. This paper reviews a model-independent approach to study phase transitions in this scenario, which can be adopted if supercooling is strong enough. Perturbative methods can be used to determine the effective action and such model-independent approach allows us to obtain ready-to-use formulas that can be applied to any specific model of this sort.