Thermal field theory and gravitational waves group meeting

Session

Group Meeting

28 Jan 2026, 10:00

Science I, 222 (Ecole de Physique -- Université de Genève)

1. Limits of EFTs at finite temperature for strong phase transitions

Fabio Bernardo (Universitè de Genève)

28/01/2026, 10:00

Phase transitions are violent and interesting phenomena that could have occurred in the early universe. Possible techniques to study these phenomena can be used in the presence of a hierarchy of scales, leading to the construction of finite temperature Effective Field Theories by integrating out heavier scales. These EFTs are reliable when the dynamics are mainly encoded in the most relevant...

2. Improving bubble wall velocity predictions in electroweak phase transitions

Salma Kämpf

28/01/2026, 10:30

I study bubble wall velocities in first-order electroweak phase transitions using loop-corrected equations of motion for the Higgs field with plasma induced friction effects. These corrections affect the friction experienced by the bubble wall and play an important role in determining its steady state velocity, which is relevant for gravitational wave signals and probes of physics beyond the...

3. Acoustic fluid perturbations in first-order phase transitions

Antonino Midiri

28/01/2026, 11:00

First-Order Phase Transitions in the early Universe can source a Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background. If they occur at the electroweak scale, the resulting Gravitational Wave spectrum can peak in the LISA sensitivity band. Many processes in a First-Order Phase Transition can contribute to the resulting Gravitational Wave spectrum. The expanding scalar broken-phase bubbles can produce...

4. The Heat-Kernel method and the effective theory of hot QCD

Romain Guillermo Reinle

28/01/2026, 11:30

During this talk, I will show how one can use the Heat-Kernel method (also known as proper-time method) to compute the one-loop matching of the dimension-6 operators basis of the dimensional reduced effective theory of hot QCD (EQCD).