A renormalization group improvement for thermally resummed effective potential

Abstract

We propose a novel method for renormalization group improvement of thermally resummed effective potential. In our method, $\beta$-functions are temperature dependent as a consequence of the divergence structure in resummed perturbation theory. In contrast to the ordinary $\overline{\text{MS}}$ scheme, the renormalization group invariance of the resummed finite-temperature effective potential holds order by order, which significantly mitigates a notorious renormalization scale dependence of phase transition quantities such as a critical temperature even at the one-loop order. We also devise a tractable method that enables one to incorporate temperature-dependent higher-order corrections by fully exploiting the renormalization group invariance.

Comments: 7 pages, 1 figure; v2: clarifications added, version accepted for publication as a Letter in PRD