NON-EQUILIBRIUM DYNAMICS OF HOT ABELIAN HIGGS MODEL
Arttu K. Rajantie · 2000
The real-time dynamics of finite-temperature gauge theories can be approximated, to leading-order accuracy in the coupling constants, by a classical field theory with the hard thermal loop Lagrangian. I show how this approach can be used in numerical lattice simulations to study dynamics of the Abelian Higgs model in or slightly out of equilibrium. 1 Hard thermal loops Depending on its details, the electroweak phase transition may explain the observed baryon asymmetry in the Universe. 1 Although static equilibrium properties such as the phase structure of the theory have been determined to high accuracy with numerical lattice simulations, 2 much less is known about non-equilibrium dynamics, or even real-time correlators in equilibrium. The reason is that to calculate any real-time correlator, one needs to evaluate a Minkowskian path integral, which cannot be done using Monte Carlo methods, and perturbation theory breaks down because of infrared problems. Assuming that the fields are initially in thermal equilibrium, the occupation