Fluctuation corrections to bubble nucleation

Abstract

The fluctuation determinant which determines the preexponential factor of the transition rate for minimal bubbles is computed for the electroweak theory with $\sin Θ_W = 0$. As the basic action we use the three-dimensional high-temperature action including, besides temperature dependent masses, the $T Φ^3$ one-loop contribution which makes the phase transition first order. The results show that this contribution (which has then to be subtracted from the exact result) gives the dominant contribution to the one-loop effective action. The remaining correction is of the order of, but in general larger than the critical bubble action and suppresses the transition rate. The results for the Higgs field fluctuations are compared with those of an approximate heat kernel computation of Kripfganz et al., good agreement is found for small bubbles, strong deviations for large thin-wall bubbles.