On the phase transition in the scalar theory

Abstract The basic tool for the study of the electroweak phase transition is V eff ( o , T >), the one-loop finite-temperature effective potential, improved by all-loop resummations of the most important infrared contributions. In this paper we perform, as a first step towards a full analysis of the standard model case, a detailed study of the effective potential of the scalar theory. We show that subleading corrections to the self-energies lead to spurious terms, linear in the field-dependent mass m (o), in the daisy-improved effective potential. Consistency at subleading order requires the introduction of superdaisy diagrams, which prevent the appearance of linear terms. The resulting V eff ( o , T ) for the scalar theory hints at a phase transition which is either second-order or very weakly first-order.