Speaker
Description
The out-of-equilibrium evolution of the early universe plays a central role in addressing some of the most pressing outstanding puzzles of particle physics, such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry and the production of dark matter. A consistent description of the non-equilibrium dynamics of the system requires systematically incorporating quantum and thermal effects, which can be achieved via the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism together with the two-particle-irreducible (2PI) effective action.
In this talk, I show how this first-principles approach can be used to study the real-time dynamics of an expanding bubble during a cosmological first-order phase transition. In particular, I demonstrate how this framework naturally accounts for the impact of particle production onto the bubble wall, which the conventional kinetic picture misses.