Thermal fluctuations in electroweak phase transition

Abstract

We estimate the amplitude of thermal fluctuations by calculating the typical size of subcritical bubbles in cosmological electroweak phase transition and show that this thermal fluctuation effect drastically changes dynamics of the phase transition from the ordinary first order type with supercooling. From this fact, we conclude that the standard electroweak baryogenesis scenario associated with such a first order transition does not work in the minimal standard model in certain conditions.

uuencoded postscript file ( 6 pages and 4 figures )