Fluctuation induced first order phase transition inU(n)×U(n)models using chiral invariant expansion of functional renormalization group flows

Abstract

Phase transition in U(n)xU(n) models is investigated for arbitrary flavor number n. We present a nonperturbative, 3+1 dimensional finite temperature treatment of obtaining the effective potential, based on a chiral invariant expansion of the functional renormalization group flows. The obtained tower of equations is similar but not identical to that of the Dyson-Schwinger hierarchy and has to be truncated for practical purposes. We investigate the finite temperature behavior of the system in an expansive set of the parameter space for n = 2, 3, 4 and also perform a large-n analysis. Our method is capable of recovering the one-loop beta functions of the coupling constants of the epsilon expansion; furthermore, it shows direct evidence that regardless of the actual flavor number, within our approximation, the system undergoes a fluctuation induced first order phase transition.