Thermodynamics of electroweak matter

This paper is a slightly modified version of the introductory part of a PhD thesis, also containing the articles hep-ph/0303019, hep-ph/0510375 and hep-ph/0512177. We provide a short history of the research of electroweak thermodynamics and a brief introduction to the theory as well as to the necessary theoretical tools needed to work at finite temperatures. We then review computations regarding the pressure of electroweak matter at high temperatures (the full expression of the perturbative expansion of the pressure is given in the appendix) and the electroweak phase diagram at finite chemical potentials. Finally, we compare electroweak and QCD thermodynamics.