PhaseTracer: tracing cosmological phases and calculating transition properties

Peter Athron, Csaba Balazs, Andrew Fowlie, Yang Zhang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

We present a C++ software package called PhaseTracer for mapping out cosmological phases, and potential transitions between them, for Standard Model extensions with any number of scalar fields. PhaseTracer traces the minima of effective potential as the temperature changes, and then calculates the critical temperatures, at which the minima are degenerate. PhaseTracer is constructed with modularity, flexibility and practicality in mind. It is fast and stable, and can receive potentials provided by other packages such as FlexibleSUSY. PhaseTracer can be useful analysing cosmological phase transitions which played an important role in the very early evolution of the Universe. If they were first order they could generate detectable gravitational waves and/or trigger electroweak baryogenesis to generate the observed matter anti-matter asymmetry of the Universe. The code can be obtained from https://github.com/PhaseTracer/PhaseTracer.
Original languageEnglish
Article number567
Number of pages21
JournalEuropean Physical Journal C
Volume80
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Jun 2020

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