Abstract
The high-temperature limit of the 2-loop effective potential for the Higgs field is calculated from an effective 3d theory, in a general covariant gauge. It is shown explicitly that a gauge-independent result can be extracted for the equation of state from the gauge-dependent effective potential. The convergence of perturbation theory is estimated in the broken phase, utilizing the gauge dependence of the effective potential.Comment: 13 LaTeX-pages + 2 ps-figure (Instructions added to uudecode the ps-file.