Importance of the coupling-constant temperature dependence in supercooled phase transitions

Abstract

Recent studies of the SU(5) Coleman-Weinberg phase transition have shown that the transition occurs at a temperature of approximately 1 GeV, indicating extreme supercooling. In these calculations, the temperature dependence of the gauge coupling constant was ignored. By including this dependence, and changing nothing else, it is shown that the transition takes place at approximately 2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}${10}^{10}$ GeV instead, demonstrating the importance of including this effect in calculations of extreme supercooling. The temperature dependence of other quantities used in the calculation is also discussed. Including all temperature dependences shows that, in this particular model, the transition does not occur until the coupling becomes large and perturbation theory breaks down.