Phase transitions and bubble nucleations for a phi^6 model in curved spacetime

Abstract

Condsidering a massive self-interacting phi ^6 scalar field coupled arbitrarily to a (2+1) dimensional Bianchi type-I spacetime, we evaluate the one-loop effective potential. It is found that phi ^6 potential can be regularized in (2+1) dimensional curved spacetime. A finite expression for the energy-momentum tensor is obtained for this model. Evaluating the finite temperature effective potential, the temperature dependence of phase transitions is studied. The crucial dependence of the phase transitions on the spacetime curvature and on the coupling to gravity are also verified. We also discuss the nucleation of bubbles in a phi ^6 model. It is found that there exists an exact solution for the damped motion of the bubble in the thin wall regime.