Pheno-Coffee Talk

Speaker: Subhendra Mohanty (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India)

Title: Effective theories at finite temperature

Abstract: Effective theories offer an economical way to test the predictions of diverse UV complete theories in low energy experiments. The finite temperature formulation of effective theories is needed for applications in cosmology and collider experiments in phase transitions, quark gluon plasma, Casimir effect etc. I will discuss a way to formulate effective theories at finite temperature using the Heat Kernel Method which involves the calculation of finite temperature corrections to the Wilson coefficients. I will illustrate the results with a calculation of Coleman-Weinberg potential for the Higgs-Effective field theory and apply it in testing the nature of phase transition from different extensions of the standard model. Of particular interest is the emergence of Polyakov loops as a parameter which has applications in phase transitions and spin-systems in condensed matter.