Models with small cosmological constant at finite temperature
Bithika Jain (Syracuse University)

In 5D holographic realizations of spontaneously broken approximate conformal invariance, a naturally light dilaton can be obtained via the introduction of the small dependence of the 5D scalar potential on the field itself. The resulting 4D effective cosmological constant is also suppressed. In this talk I will discuss the finite temperature behaviour of such models using holography, with envisioned application to cosmological phase transitions during which the effective 4D cosmological constant is expected to change. This is realised by studying classical solutions to the 5D scalar and Einstein field equations that have a regular horizon, in the presence of non-trivial scalar field vacuum expectation value. I shall then discuss how the results we find are distinct from the Randall Sundrum phase transitions with Goldberger-Wise stabilization.