arXiv subjects

Renhui Qin

Publications and source records attributed to Renhui Qin.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards Accurate Gravitational Wave Predictions: Gauge-Invariant Nucleation in the Electroweak Phase Transition

The vacuum decay in the early Universe should be gauge-invariant. In this work, we study the gauge dependence of the vacuum decay occurring through a first-order phase transition and the associated gravitational wave production. We investigate the gauge dependence of the bubble nucleation and phase transition parameters within the framework of the Standard model effective field theory in three dimension. By considering the power-counting and utilizing the Nielsen identity at finite temperature, we show that, depending on the power-counting scheme favored by the new physics scale, the perturbative computation methodology allow we get the gauge-independent nucleation rates and phase transition, this enables more accurate predictions of gravitational wave signatures.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Gauge-Invariant Bubble Nucleation and Gravitational Waves from First-Order Electroweak Phase Transitions

A long-standing problem in electroweak phase transition studies is the spurious gauge dependence of bubble nucleation rate calculations, which introduces large systematic uncertainties in predictions of gravitational waves and related cosmological phenomena. We address this issue by presenting a systematic study of gauge-invariant bubble nucleation within a phenomenologically realistic effective field theory framework. Using the three-dimensional thermal effective field theory formalism with a consistent power-counting scheme, we rigorously establish the gauge invariance of the physical nucleation rate up to two-loop order. This proof eliminates the gauge-parameter dependence of key phase transition parameters, providing a robust theoretical foundation for precise calculations of gravitational waves, electroweak baryogenesis, and primordial magnetogenesis.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

False Vacuum Decay across the Quantum-to-Thermal Crossover: A Comparison of Real-Time Observables

We develop a real-time Wigner-functional lattice framework with positive Hartree-Gaussian initial sampling and introduce a connected-cluster survival criterion for extracting false-vacuum decay rates across the crossover from quantum fluctuations to thermal nucleation. At high temperatures, the connected-cluster rate agrees well with the Hartree-resummed thermal nucleation benchmark, while the commonly used global-survival criterion can give substantially smaller rates because of multi-seed dynamics and global averaging. At low temperatures, the connected-cluster and global-survival rates approach each other in the dilute-event regime, whereas the false-vacuum fraction observable can be contaminated by transient spatial conversion and kink-antikink reflection. Our results clarify how different real-time observables encode distinct aspects of metastable decay.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Theoretical Uncertainties in First-Order Electroweak Phase Transitions

We systematically investigate theoretical uncertainties in perturbative analyses of first-order electroweak phase transitions (EWPT). Utilizing the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) framework, we quantify the gauge dependence, renormalization scheme, and scale dependences in predicting phase-transition parameters across both zero and finite chemical potential regimes. Our key findings reveal that: 1) the gauge-parameter dependence and the chemical potential are subdominants, and 2) Baryon number preservation criteria and phase transition observables exhibit pronounced sensitivity to the renormalization scale in the ${\overline{\rm MS}}$ scheme. Comparative analyses with the on-shell scheme demonstrate that within strongly first-order EWPT parameter spaces, the ${\overline{\rm MS}}$ scheme predicts enhanced phase transition strengths and prolonged transition durations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Baryogenesis via the Chiral Magnetic Effect in a First-Order Electroweak Phase Transition

In this paper, we investigate the generation of the baryon asymmetry of the universe during the first-order electroweak phase transition. We first study the generation of the helical magnetic field in the framework of the standard model effective field theory with a CP-violating operator. We show that, when the chiral magnetic effect is absent, the helical magnetic field and effective chemical potential cannot generate enough baryon asymmetry when vacuum bubbles collide. We further find that the chiral magnetic effect can amplify the lepton asymmetry in the early universe during the phase transition. We present the baryon asymmetry interpretation requirement on certain parameter spaces of the phase transition and the primordial magnetic field.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

First-order Electroweak phase transition with Gauge-invariant approach

We study the electroweak phase transition dynamics with a three-dimensional standard model effective field theory under a gauge-invariant approach. We observe that, at the two-loop level, the phase transition parameters obtained with the gauge invariant approach can at most deviate from that of the dimensional reduction method around the percent level. We further found that the predicted gravitational wave signals at the new physics scale $\Lambda\gtrsim 590$ GeV are unreachable by the space-based interferometers, such as: LISA, TianQin, and Taiji.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

First-order Electroweak phase transition at finite density

We study the Electroweak phase transition with the Standard Model effective field theory at finite temperature and finite density. Utilizing the dimensional reduction approach, we construct the tree dimensional thermal effective field theory at finite density and investigate the phase transition dynamics. We evaluate how the results depend on the renormalization scale and the chemical potential. Our results show that, with the tree dimensional thermal effective potential at 2-loop level, we can effectively reduce the theoretical uncertainty in the calculations of the phase transition parameters due to the renormalization scale dependence, and the new physics scale is restricted to be $\Lambda\lesssim (770-800)$ GeV by the baryon number washout avoidance condition. Meanwhile, the presence of the chemical potential would affect the phase transition parameter and make the constraints from the baryon number washout avoidance condition more strict, especially for weaker first-order phase transition scenarios at higher new physics scales.

hep-ph↗