We undertake a careful analysis of stochastic gravitational wave production from cosmological phase transitions in an expanding universe, studying both a standard radiation as well as a matter dominated history. We analyze in detail the dynamics of the phase transition, including the false vacuum fraction, bubble lifetime distribution, bubble number density, mean bubble separation, etc., for an expanding universe. We also study the full set of differential equations governing the evolution of plasma and the scalar field during the phase transition and generalize results obtained in Minkowski spacetime. In particular, we generalize the sound shell model to the expanding universe and determine the velocity field power spectrum. This ultimately provides an accurate calculation of the gravitational wave spectrum seen today for the dominant source of sound waves. For the amplitude of the gravitational wave spectrum visible today, we find a suppression factor arising from the finite lifetime of the sound waves and compare with the commonly used result in the literature, which corresponds to the asymptotic value of our suppression factor. We point out that the asymptotic value is only applicable for a very long lifetime of the sound waves, which is highly unlikely due to the onset of shocks, turbulence and other damping processes. We also point out that features of the gravitational wave spectral form may hold the tantalizing possibility of distinguishing between different expansion histories using phase transitions.

We present a dedicated complementarity study of gravitational wave and collider measurements of the simplest extension of the Higgs sector: the singlet scalar augmented Standard Model. We study the following issues: (i) the electroweak phase transition patterns admitted by the model, and the proportion of parameter space for each pattern; (ii) the regions of parameter space that give detectable gravitational waves at future space-based detectors; and (iii) the current and future collider measurements of di-Higgs production, as well as searches for a heavy weak diboson resonance, and how these searches interplay with regions of parameter space that exhibit strong gravitational wave signals. We carefully investigate the behavior of the normalized energy released during the phase transition as a function of the model parameters, address subtle issues pertaining to the bubble wall velocity, and provide a description of different fluid velocity profiles. On the collider side, we identify the subset of points that are most promising in terms of di-Higgs and weak diboson production studies while also giving detectable signals at LISA, setting the stage for future benchmark points that can be used by both communities.

We study in this work a scenario that the universe undergoes a two step phase transition with the first step happened to the dark matter sector and the second step being the transition between the dark matter and the electroweak vacuums, where the barrier between the two vacuums, that is necessary for a strongly first order electroweak phase transition (EWPT) as required by the electroweak baryogenesis mechanism, arises at the tree-level. We illustrate this idea by working with the standard model (SM) augmented by a scalar singlet dark matter and an extra scalar singlet which mixes with the SM Higgs boson. We study the conditions for such pattern of phase transition to occur and especially for the strongly first order EWPT to take place, as well as its compatibility with the basic requirements of a successful dark matter, such as observed relic density and constraints of direct detections. We further explore the discovery possibility of this pattern EWPT by searching for the gravitational waves generated during this process in spaced based interferometer, by showing a representative benchmark point of the parameter space that the generated gravitational waves fall within the sensitivity of eLISA, DECIGO and BBO.

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We explore lepton-flavored electroweak baryogenesis, driven by CP-violation in leptonic Yukawa sector, using the τ − μ system in the two Higgs doublet model as an example. This setup generically yields, together with the flavor-changing decay h → τμ, a tree-level Jarlskog invariant that can drive dynamical generation of baryon asymmetry during a first-order electroweak phase transition and results in CP-violating effects in the decay h → ττ. We find that the observed baryon asymmetry can be generated in parameter space compatible with current experimental results for the decays h → τμ, h → ττ, and τ → μγ, as well as the present bound on the electric dipole moment of the electron. The baryon asymmetry generated is intrinsically correlated with the CP-violating decay h → ττ and the flavor-changing decay h → τμ, which thus may serve as "smoking guns" to test lepton-flavored electroweak baryogenesis.

A gravitational wave detector can be used to search for dark photon dark matter. We use the publicly available data from LIGO's first observing run, O1, to perform the first such search. We find that, if a dark photon is the gauge boson of U (1)B, LIGO-O1 data has already provided a sensitivity better in a mass band around mA ∼ 4 × 10 −13 eV than achieved by prior experiments. Substantially improved search sensitivity is expected during the coming years of continued data taking by LIGO and other gravitational wave detectors in a growing global network.

In this work, we make the first study of electroweak baryogenesis (EWBG) based on the LHC data in the CP-violating next-to-minimal supersymmetric model (NMSSM) where a strongly first order electroweak phase transition (EWPT) is obtained in the general complex Higgs potential. With representative benchmark points which pass the current LEP and LHC constraints, we demonstrate the structure of EWPT for those points and how a strongly first order EWPT is obtained in the complex NMSSM where the resulting gravitational wave production properties are found to be within the reaches of future space-based interferometers like BBO and Ultimate-DECIGO. We further calculate the generated baryon asymmetries where the CP violating sources are (1): higgsino-singlino dominated, (2): higgsino-gaugino dominated or (3): from both sources. It is shown that all three representing scenarios could evade the strong constraints set by various electric dipole moments (EDM) searches where cancellations among the EDM contributions occur at the tree level (higgsino-singlino dominated) or loop level (higgsino-gaugino dominated). The 125 GeV SM like Higgs can be either the second lightest neutral Higgs H2 or the third lightest neutral Higgs H3. Finally, we comment on the future direct and indirect probe of CPV in the Higgs sector from the collider and EDM experiments.

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