Speaker
Michael Nee
(Oxford U.)
Description
First order phase transitions play an important role in the cosmology of many theories of BSM physics. In this talk I will discuss how a population of magnetic monopoles present in the early universe can seed first order phase transitions, causing them to proceed much more rapidly than in the usual case. The field profiles describing the decay do not have the typically assumed O(3)/O(4) symmetry, thus requiring an extension of the usual decay rate calculation. To numerically determine the saddle point solutions which describe the decay we use a new algorithm based on the mountain pass theorem. Our results show that monopole-catalysed tunnelling can dominate over the homogeneous decay for a wide range of parameters.
