High Temperature Phase Transitions in Two-Scalar Theories with Large $N$ Techniques

Abstract

We consider a theory of a scalar one-component field $ϕ$ coupled to a scalar $N$-component field $χ$. Using large $N$ techiques we calculate the effective potential in the leading order in $1/N$. We show that this is equivalent to a resummation of an infinite subclass of graphs in perturbation theory, which involve fluctuations of the $χ$ field only. We study the temperature dependence of the expectation value of the $ϕ$ field and the resulting first and second order phase transitions.