We analyse effective potential around the electroweak (EW) scale in the Standard Model extended with a heavy scalar doublet. We show that the additional scalars can have a strong impact on vacuum stability. Although the additional heavy scalars may improve the behaviour of running Higgs self-coupling at large field values, we prove that they can destabilise the vacuum due to EW-scale effects. A new EW symmetry conserving minimum of the effective potential can appear rendering the electroweak symmetry breaking minimum meta- or unstable. However, for the case of the inert doublet model (IDM) with a 125 GeV Higgs boson we demonstrate that the parameter space region where the vacuum is meta- or unstable cannot be reconciled with the constraints from perturbative unitarity, electroweak precision tests and dark matter relic abundance measurements.
Ferrara University（费拉拉大学）；INFN Sez. Ferrara, Dept. of Physics and Earth Science（意大利国家核物理研究所费拉拉分部，地球科学与物理系）；Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE)（高能物理研究所）；The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST)（巴塞罗那科学技术研究所）
We consider the possibility that the gauge hierarchy is a byproduct of the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, i.e., that whatever mechanism is responsible for the latter also sets the running Higgs mass to a value smaller than its natural value by many orders of magnitude. This perspective is motivated by the early-time framework for eternal inflation put forth recently, which favors vacua that are relatively short-lived, but applies more generally to any theoretical approach predicting that our vacuum should be metastable. We find that the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, togeth…
Current measurements of Standard Model parameters suggest that the electroweak vacuum is metastable. This metastability has important cosmological implications, because large fluctuations in the Higgs field could trigger vacuum decay in the early universe. For the false vacuum to survive, interactions which stabilize the Higgs during inflation -- e.g., inflaton-Higgs interactions or non-minimal couplings to gravity -- are typically necessary. However, the post-inflationary preheating dynamics of these same interactions could also trigger vacuum decay, thereby recreating the problem we sought t…
The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favoured over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies that it is possible, and in fact inevitable, that a vacuum decay takes place with catastrophic consequences for the Universe. The metastability of the Higgs vacuum is especially significant for cosmology, because there are many mechanisms that could have triggered the decay of the electroweak vacuum in the early Universe. We present a comprehensive review o…
We study the electroweak phase transition in the framework of scalar singlet-doublet mixed dark matter model, where the particle dark matter candidate is the lightest neutral Higgs that comprised of the CP-even component of inert doublet and a singlet scalar. The dark matter can be dominated by the inert doublet or singlet scalar depending on the mixing. We present several benchmark models to investigate the two situations after imposing several theoretical and experimental constraints. An additional singlet scalar and the inert doublet drive the electroweak phase transition to be strongly fir…
Electroweak symmetry non-restoration up to high temperatures well above the electroweak scale offers new alternatives for baryogenesis. We propose a new approach for electroweak symmetry non-restoration via an inert Higgs sector that couples to the Standard Model Higgs as well as an extended scalar singlet sector. We implement renormalization group improvements and thermal resummation, necessary to evaluate the effective potential spanning over a broad range of energy scales and temperatures. We present examples of benchmark scenarios that allow for electroweak symmetry non-restoration all the…
We study the minimal type-III seesaw model in which we extend the SM by adding two $SU(2)_L$ triplet fermions with zero hypercharge to explain the origin of the non-zero neutrino masses. We show that the naturalness conditions and the limits from lepton flavor violating decays provide very stringent bounds on the model parameters along with the constraints from the stability/metastability of the electroweak vacuum. We perform a detailed analysis of the model parameter space including all the constraints for both normal as well as inverted hierarchies of the light neutrino masses. We find that …
We study the dynamics of electroweak phase transition in a simple extension of the Standard Model where the Higgs sector is extended by adding an $SU(2)_L$-triplet with hypercharge Y=2. By making random scans over the parameters of the model, we show that there are regions consistent with constraints from collider experiments and the requirement for a strong first-order electroweak phase transition which is needed for electroweak baryogenesis. Further, we also study the power spectrum of the gravitational waves which can be generated due to the first-order phase transitions. Moreover, the dete…
We analyze the vacuum stability in the inert Higgs doublet extension of the Standard Model (SM), augmented by right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) to explain neutrino masses at tree level by the seesaw mechanism. We make a comparative study of the high- and low-scale seesaw scenarios and the effect of the Dirac neutrino Yukawa couplings on the stability of the Higgs potential. Bounds on the scalar quartic couplings and Dirac Yukawa couplings are obtained from vacuum stability and perturbativity considerations. The regions corresponding to stability, metastability and instability of the electroweak va…
We provide a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the prospects to realize Dark Matter (DM) in the Inert Doublet Model, while simultaneously enhancing the Electroweak Phase Transition (EWPhT) such as to allow for electroweak baryogenesis. Instead of focusing on certain aspects or mass hierarchies, we perform extensive, yet fine-grained, parameter space scans, where we analyze the nature of the EWPhT in both the light and the heavy DM regions, confronting it with the amount of DM potentially residing in the lightest inert-doublet state. Thereby, we point out a viable region where a non-triv…
We evaluate dominant two-loop corrections to the triple Higgs coupling and strength of a first-order electroweak phase transition in the inert Higgs doublet model. It is found that sunset diagrams can predominantly enhance the former and reduce the latter. As a result, the triple Higgs coupling normalized by the standard model value at two-loop level is more enhanced than the corresponding one-loop value.
The inert doublet model is a well-motivated extension of the Standard Model that contains a dark matter candidate and modifies the dynamics of the electroweak symmetry breaking. In order to detail its phenomenology, we perform a comprehensive study of cosmic phase transitions and gravitational wave signals implied by the framework, accounting for the latest results of collider experiments. We require the neutral inert scalar to constitute, at least, a subdominant part of the observed dark matter abundance. While most of the phase transitions proceed through a single step, we identify regions o…
We study a dark matter model constructed by extending the standard model with an inert $\mathrm{SU}(2)_\mathrm{L}$ sextuplet scalar of hypercharge 1/2. The sextuplet components are split by the quartic couplings between the sextuplet and the Higgs doublet after electroweak symmetry breaking, resulting in a dark sector with one triply charged, two doubly charged, two singly charged, and two neutral scalars. The lighter neutral scalar boson acts as a dark matter particle. We investigate the constraints on this model from the $\text{monojet} + /\!\!\!\!E_\mathrm{T}$ and $\text{soft-dilepton} + \t…
In this work, we consider an extension of the Standard Model (SM) with an inert Higgs doublet and a real scalar singlet, in order to address problems around the origin of dark matter (DM). In this model, the lightest among the CP-odd and CP-even neutral inert components plays the role of a DM candidate, where the model parameters are subject to many theoretical and experimental constraints. These constraints include vacuum stability, perturbativity, LEP negative searches, electroweak precision tests, Higgs di-photon, Higgs invisible and Higgs undetermined decays, DM relic density and DM direct…
We consider an extension of the standard model (SM) with an inert Higgs doublet and three Majorana singlet fermions to address both origin and the smallness of neutrino masses and dark matter (DM) problems. In this setup, the lightest Majorana singlet fermion plays the role of DM candidate and the model parameter space can be accommodated to avoid different experimental constraints such as lepton flavor violating processes and electroweak precision tests. The neutrino mass is generated at one-loop level a la Scotogenic model and its smallness is ensured by the degeneracy between the CP-odd and…
We made global fits of the inert Higgs doublet model (IDM) in the light of collider and dark matter search limits and the requirement for a strongly first-order electroweak phase transition (EWPT). These show that there are still IDM parameter spaces compatible with the observational constraints considered. In particular, the data and theoretical requirements imposed favour the hypothesis for the existence of a scalar dark matter candidate around 100 GeV. This is mostly due to the pull towards lower masses by the EWPT constraint. The impact of electroweak precision measurements, the dark matte…
