Gravitational waves from patterns of electroweak symmetry breaking: an effective perspective

Abstract

The future space-borne gravitational wave (GW) detectors would provide a promising probe for the new physics beyond the standard model that admits the first-order phase transitions. The predictions for the GW background vary sensitively among different concrete particle physics models but also share a large degeneracy in the model buildings, which motivates an effective model description on the phase transition based on different patterns of the electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB). In this paper, using the scalar N -plet model as a demonstration, we propose an effective classification for three different patterns of EWSB: (1) radiative symmetry breaking with classical scale invariance, (2) Higgs mechanism in generic scalar extension, and (3) higher dimensional operators. We conclude that a strong first-order phase transition could be realized for (1) and ( 2) with a small quartic coupling and a small isospin of an additional N -plet field for the light scalar field model with and without the classical scale invariance, and (3) with a large mixing coupling between scalar fields and a large isospin of the N -plet field for the heavy scalar field model.

W-boson mass anomaly from a general SU(2) L scalar multiplet*

“…On the one hand, modification of the scalar sector is intimately related to the true mechanism of electroweak (EW) gauge symmetry breaking and the associated hierarchy problem, which might be probed by measuring the EW oblique parameters [130][131][132][133][134][135] and trilinear Higgs coupling [136][137][138][139][140]. On the other hand, the introduced scalar multiplet may solve many puzzles in the SM, such as the nature of dark matter (DM) [141][142][143][144][145][146], the generation of matter-anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe [147][148][149][150], and the characteristics of the EW phase transition and its associated stochastic gravitational wave signals [151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168]. Therefore, unveiling the structure of the scalar sector may help deepen our understanding of the overall picture of the SM and the physics beyond it.…”

Constraining the gravitational-wave spectrum from cosmological first-order phase transitions using data from LIGO-Virgo first three observing runs

“…The early stage of the Universe might contain a variety of PTs since many extensions of Standard Model, such as grand unification model [4], suppersymmetric model [5] and so on, predict the occurrence of PTs. See some other relevant models in [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. At QCD scale, PT could happen due to the confinement between quarks and gluons [15,16].…”

Constraining the Gravitational-Wave Spectrum from Cosmological First-Order Phase Transitions Using Data from LIGO-Virgo First Three Observing Runs

“…The early evolution of the Universe might contain a variety of PTs since many extensions of Standard Model, such as grand unification model [4], suppersymmetric model [5] and so on, predict the occurrence of PTs. See some other relevant models in [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. At QCD scale, PT could happen due to the confinement between quarks and gluons [15,16].…”