Pressure of the Standard Model Near the Electroweak Phase Transition

We extend our previous determination of the thermodynamic pressure of the Standard Model so that the result can be applied down to temperatures corresponding to the electroweak crossover. This requires a further resummation which can be cleanly organised within the effective theory framework. The result allows for a precise determination of the expansion rate of the Universe for temperatures around the electroweak crossover.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures. v2: published versio

Pressure of the Standard Model at High Temperatures

We compute the pressure of the standard model at high temperatures in the symmetric phase to three loops, or to O(g^5) in all coupling constants. We find that the terms of the perturbative expansion in the SU(2) + Higgs sector decrease monotonically with increasing order, but the large values of the strong coupling constant g_s and the Yukawa coupling of the top quark g_Y make the expansion in the full theory converge more slowly. The final result is observed to be about 10% smaller than the ideal gas pressure commonly used in cosmological calculations.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures. v2: one reference added, minor revisions, accepted for publication in JHE

Holographic Anomalous Conductivities and the Chiral Magnetic Effect

We calculate anomaly induced conductivities from a holographic gauge theory model using Kubo formulas, making a clear conceptual distinction between thermodynamic state variables such as chemical potentials and external background fields. This allows us to pinpoint ambiguities in previous holographic calculations of the chiral magnetic conductivity. We also calculate the corresponding anomalous current three-point functions in special kinematic regimes. We compare the holographic results to weak coupling calculations using both dimensional regularization and cutoff regularization. In order to reproduce the weak coupling results it is necessary to allow for singular holographic gauge field configurations when a chiral chemical potential is introduced for a chiral charge defined through a gauge invariant but non-conserved chiral density. We argue that this is appropriate for actually addressing charge separation due to the chiral magnetic effect.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figure. v2: 18 pages, 1 figure, discussion clarified throughout the text, references added, version accepted for publication in JHE

Thermodynamics and phase diagram of anisotropic Chern-Simons deformed gauge theories

We consider 3+1-dimensional gauge theories at finite temperature and a finite density of charges which couple to a 2+1-dimensional Chern-Simons operator, giving rise to a theta-term with constant spatial gradient of theta. The strong-coupling limit of thermal N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory with this kind of anisotropic deformation has been used in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence as a model for strongly coupled anisotropic quark-gluon plasma. In this paper we work out the thermodynamics and the (nontrivial) phase diagram in the limit of vanishing gauge coupling and compare with the corresponding strong-coupling results.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, v2: low temperature expansion corrected, references added, some discussion expande

Sähköheikon aineen termodynamiikka

The electroweak theory is the part of the standard model of particle physics that describes the weak and electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles. Since its formulation almost 40 years ago, it has been experimentally verified to a high accuracy and today it has a status as one of the cornerstones of particle physics. Thermodynamics of electroweak physics has been studied ever since the theory was written down and the features the theory exhibits at extreme conditions remain an interesting research topic even today. In this thesis, we consider some aspects of electroweak thermodynamics. Specifically, we compute the pressure of the standard model to high precision and study the structure of the electroweak phase diagram when finite chemical potentials for all the conserved particle numbers in the theory are introduced. In the first part of the thesis, the theory, methods and essential results from the computations are introduced. The original research publications are reprinted at the end.Aineen ominaisuuksien ymmärtäminen on eräs modernin fysiikan keskeisimpiä päämääriä. Arkisissa olosuhteissa aine koostuu atomeista, molekyyleista ja vapaista elektroneista ja niiden väliset vuorovaikutukset voidaan kuvata kvanttielektrodynamiikan avulla. Lämpötilan ja aineen tiheyden kasvaessa nämä aineen tavalliset rakennusosat kuitenkin hajoavat ja aine muodostuu silloin alkeishiukkasista. Tuolloin aineen ominaisuuksien selvittämiseksi on turvauduttava hiukkasfysiikan teorioihin. Alkeishiukkasia ja niiden välisiä sähkömagneettisia- sekä vahvoja ja heikkoja ydinvuorovaikutuksia kuvaa hyvin tarkasti hiukkasfysiikan standardimalli. Tällä teorialla on monia mielenkiintoisia ominaisuuksia liittyen, muiden muassa, erilaisiin faasitransitioihin. Toistaiseksi vain vahvasti vuorovaikuttavan aineen ominaisuuksia on kyetty tarkastelemaan kokeellisesti, kun taas niin sanotun sähköheikon aineen (ainetta, jonka ominaisuuksien ymmärtämiseksi on sähkömagneettiset ja heikot vuorovaikutukset otettava huomioon) käyttäytyminen tunnetaan vain teoreettisten tarkastelujen kautta. Tässä väitöksessä tarkastellaan eräitä sähköheikon aineen ominaisuuksia. Erityisesti, tälläisen aineen paine on väitöksessä laskettu suurella tarkkuudella. Myös sähköheikon aineen faasidiagramman rakennetta on tutkittu