On the nature of the electroweak phase transition

Abstract We discuss the finite-temperature effective potential of the Standard Model, Veff(φ,T), with emphasis on the resummation of the most important infrared contributions. We compute the one-loop scalar and vector boson self-energies in the zero-momentum limit. By solving the corresponding set of gap equations, with the inclusion of subleading contributions, we find a non-vanishing magnetic mass for the SU(2) gauge bosons. We comment on its possible implications for the nature of the electroweak phase transition. We also discuss the range of validity of our approximations and compare this with other approaches.