Speaker
Maciej Kierkla
Description
I will present an overview of the calculation of the thermal bubble nucleation rate in the context of cosmological phase transitions (PT). Focusing on the case of “SU(2)+Higgs” like theories, I will illustrate the calculation of the nucleation rate in the framework of high-temperature dimensional reduction. I will present next-to-leading order results and discuss the limitations of employing derivative expansion in the perturbation theory.
Finally, I will discuss the most relevant theoretical uncertainties that affect predictions for gravitational-wave (GW) signals from first-order PTs in the early Universe. Furthermore, I will discuss their impact on the possible reconstruction of the underlying BSM physics from measured GW signals.