The electroweak phase transition is investigated by means of the
perturbatively calculated high temperature effective potential. An analytic
result to order g4,λ2 is presented for the Abelian Higgs model, the
SU(2)-Higgs model and the standard model and a complete on-shell
renormalization at zero temperature is performed. Higher order corrections are
found to increase the strength of the first order phase transition in the
non-Abelian model, opposite to the Abelian case. This effect is traced back to
the infrared contributions from the typical non-Abelian diagrams. The
dependence of several phase transition parameters on the Higgs mass is analysed
in detail. A new, gauge invariant, approach based on the composite field
Φ†Φ is introduced. This method, which supports the above Landau
gauge results numerically, permits a conceptually simpler treatment of the
thermodynamics of the phase transition. In particular, it enables a
straightforward comparison with lattice data and the application of the
Clausius-Clapeyron equation to the electroweak phase transition.Comment: Ph.D. thesis, 70 pages LaTeX, figures not included, complete ps-file
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