Thermal field theory applications in modern aspects of high energy physics.

摘要

In the first part, We find non-supersymmetric metastable vacua in four dimensional N = 2 gauge theories softly broken to N = 1 by a superpotential term. First we study the SU(2) gauge theory without flavors. We find the spectrum and lifetime of the metastable vacuum and possible embeddings of the model in UV complete theories. Then we consider larger gauge group theories with flavors. Finally we study the SU(2) theory without flavors at high temperatures and we demonstrate that the cooling universe can settle in the metastable vacuum, provided that: first the superpotential term is not arbitrarily small in comparison to the strong coupling scale of the gauge theory, and second the metastable vacuum lies in the strongly coupled region of the moduli space. In the second part, the local and global thermal phase structure for asymptotically AdS black holes charged under a U(1) group, with both Gauss-Bonnet and quartic field strength corrections, is mapped out for all parameter space. The analysis is performed in the grand canonical ensemble and at an arbitrary number of dimensions. New metastable configurations are exhibited both for the pure Gauss-Bonnet theory as well as the pure higher derivative gauge theory and combinations thereof. Finally, a secondary Hawking-Page transition between the smaller black hole and thermal AdS space is observed when both corrections are turned on.