Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-15-1983
Abstract
The relation between the gauge or global nature of a symmetry being broken and the order of the associated phase transition is clarified. First-order phase transitions in gauge theories are related to the asymptotic freedom of the Φ3 interaction in six dimensions. Spontaneous violation of lepton number in the standard electroweak theory provides a nontrivial illustration of our results.
Comments
This work was originally published in Physical Review D, available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.28.409.