Speaker
Description
Finite-temperature effective field theories (EFTs) were originally developed to study thermodynamics and phase transitions in non-Abelian gauge theories. More recently, they have experienced renewed interest as a tool for determining soft contributions to real-time lightcone observables.
In the context of cosmological phase transitions, the construction of such EFTs has reached new levels of automation. In particular, full dimension-six thermal hot EFTs have recently been constructed, including hot SMEFT. In this talk, I will discuss recent progress in building these EFTs, as well as their limitations. I will also briefly highlight alternative techniques, including the heat-kernel and Hilbert-series approaches at finite temperature.
Finally, I will discuss applications of these EFTs to cosmological phase transitions and outline both old and new strategies to systematically extend perturbative control beyond the high-temperature regime, enabling reliable descriptions across a wider range of temperatures.