PHASE TRANSITIONS IN HIGHER DIMENSIONAL COSMOLOGY.

We have considered five-dimensional massive scalar field coupled to gravity and evaluated the one-loop effective potential in higher dimensions. It is demonstrated that nonminimally coupled φ4 theory can be regularized in five dimensions. Temperature dependent one-loop correction and critical temperature βc are computed. The phase transitions in the early universe depend on the space–time curvature R and scalar gravitational coupling ξ. A brief discussion of symmetry restoration is also presented and the nature of phase transitions in the early universe is found to be of second order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]