We perform a three dimensional lattice simulation of the electroweak symmetry breaking process through a two-step phase transition, where one of the two steps is a first order phase transition. Our results show that: 1) when the electroweak symmetry breaking is driven by the beyond Standard Model sector around $\sim \mathcal{O}(10^{2-3})$ GeV, the gravitational wave spectra produced from the phase transitions are of broken power-law double-peak shapes; 2) when the electroweak symmetry breaking is induced by a first-order phase transition of a high-scale global U(1) theory, cosmic strings can form and then disappear through particle radiation, and the yielded gravitational wave spectra are of plateau shapes. The two scenarios can be distinguished through probing gravitational wave spectra. Our study suggests that the stochastic gravitational waves provide an alternative way to probe the beyond Standard Model sector relevant to the electroweak symmetry breaking pattern in the early Universe.
We investigate production of primordial black holes from first-order electroweak phase transition in the framework of the nearly aligned Higgs effective field theory, in which non-decoupling quantum effects are properly described. Since the mass of such primordial black holes is evaluated to be about $10^{-5}$ of the solar mass, current and future microlensing observations such as Subaru HSC, OGLE, PRIME and Roman Space Telescope may be able to probe the electroweak phase transition. We study parameter regions where primordial black holes can be produced by the first-order electroweak phase tr…
We present the relation between the sphaleron energy and the gravitational wave signals from a first order electroweak phase transition. The crucial ingredient is the scaling law between the sphaleron energy at the temperature of the phase transition and that at zero temperature. We estimate the baryon number preservation criterion, and observe that for a sufficiently strong phase transition, it is possible to probe the electroweak sphaleron using measurements of future space-based gravitational wave detectors.
Well-motivated electroweak dark matter is often hosted by an extended electroweak sector which also contains new lepton pairs with masses near the weak scale. In this paper, we explore such electroweak dark matter via combining dark matter direct detections and high-luminosity LHC probes of new lepton pairs. Using $Z$- and $W$-associated electroweak processes with two or three lepton final states, we show that dependent on the overall coupling constant, dark matter mass up to $170-210$ GeV can be excluded at $2σ$ level and up to $175-205$ GeV can be discovered at $5σ$ level at the 14 TeV LHC w…
An essential goal of the Higgs physics program at the LHC and beyond is to explore the nature of the Higgs potential and shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. An important class of models defining the strength and order of the electroweak phase transition is driven by the Higgs boson coupling to a light new state. This Snowmass white paper points out the existence of a region of parameter space where a strongly first order electroweak phase transition is compatible with exotic decays of the SM-like Higgs boson. A dedicated search for exotic Higgs decays can actively exp…
Several new physics scenarios, motivated e.g. by dark matter, feature new electroweakly charged states where the lightest particle in the multiplet is stable and neutral. In such cases direct searches at LHC are notoriously difficult, while electroweak precision tests both at hadron and lepton colliders offer the possibility to indirectly probe those states. In this work, we assess the sensitivity of the high-luminosity phase of the LHC on new electroweak multiplets via the modification of neutral and charged Drell-Yan processes, and compare the reach of future hadron and lepton colliders pres…
Multi-peaked spectra of the primordial gravitational waves are considered as a phenomenologically relevant source of information about the dynamics of sequential phase transitions in the early Universe. In particular, such signatures trace back to specific patterns of the first-order electroweak phase transition in the early Universe occurring in multiple steps. Such phenomena appear to be rather generic in multi-scalar extensions of the Standard Model. In a particularly simple extension of the Higgs sector, we have identified and studied the emergence of sequential long- and short-lasting tra…
We study the complementarity of the proposed multi-TeV muon colliders and the near-future gravitational wave (GW) detectors to the first order electroweak phase transition (FOEWPT), taking the real scalar extended Standard Model as the representative model. A detailed collider simulation shows the FOEWPT parameter space can be greatly probed via the the vector boson fusion production of the singlet, and its subsequent decay to the di-Higgs or di-boson channels. Especially, almost all the parameter space yielding detectable GW signals can be probed by the muon colliders. Therefore, if we could …
In the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT), operators involving the top quark are generally difficult to probe, and can generate sizable loop contributions to the electroweak precision observables, measured by past and future lepton colliders. Could the high precision of the electroweak measurements compensate the loop suppression and provide competitive reaches on these operators? Would the inclusion of these contributions introduce too many additional parameters for a meaningful global electroweak analysis to be done? In this paper, we perform a detailed phenomenological study to a…
We investigate the $B+L$ violation process by performing three-dimensional lattice simulations in an electroweak theory with first-order phase transition and the electroweak sphaleron decay. The simulation results indicate that the Chern-Simons number changes along with the helical magnetic field production when the sphaleron decay occurs. Our study suggests that, for the electroweak phase transition with nucleation rate being smaller than $\sim \mathcal{O}(10)$, the helical magnetic field with the fractional magnetic helicity $ε_M\leq 0.2$ can be probed by Cherenkov Telescope Array through th…
We propose direct tests of very high energy first-order phase transitions, which are elusive to collider physics, deploying the gravitational waves measurements. We show that first-order phase transitions lying into a large window of critical temperatures, which is considerably larger than the electroweak energy scale, can be tested from aLIGO and Einstein Telescope. This provides the possibility to probe several inflationary mechanisms ending with the inflaton in a false minimum, and high-energy first order phase transitions that are due to new scalar bosons, beyond the Standard Model of part…
We investigate the interplay between early universe cosmology and dark matter direct detection, considering axion models with naturally suppressed couplings to photons. In the context of the cosmological relaxation of the electroweak scale, we focus on a scenario of \emph{Relaxion Dark Matter}, in which the relaxion field constitutes all the observed dark matter relic density and its allowed mass range is fixed to a few $\mathrm{keV}$ by construction. In particular, we show that a relaxion particle with mass $m_ϕ= 3.0 \,\mathrm{keV}$ which couples to electrons with $g_{ϕ, e}= 6.8 \times 10^{-1…
The lack of evidence for the production of colored supersymmetric particles at the LHC has increased interest in searches for superpartners of the electroweak SM gauge bosons, namely the neutralinos and charginos. These are challenging due to the weak nature of the production process, and the existing discovery reach has significant gaps in due to the difficulty of separating the supersymmetric signal from SM diboson events that produce similar final states and kinematics. We apply the Recursive Jigsaw Reconstruction technique to study final states enriched in charged leptons and missing trans…
The electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) mechanism is still an undecided question in particle physics. We propose to utilize the single top quark and Higgs associated production ($th$), $Zh$ production via gluon fusion at the LHC to probe the couplings between the Higgs and the gauge bosons and further to test the EWSB. We demonstrate that the $th$ and $gg\to Zh$ productions are sensitive to the relative sign of couplings ($ht\bar{t}$, $hWW$) and ($ht\bar{t}$, $hZZ$), respectively. We find that the relative sign between $hWW$ and $hZZ$ couplings could be fully determined after combining the pr…
We consider a singlet extension of the Standard Model (SM) with a spontaneous $Z_2$ breaking and study the gluon-gluon fusion production of the heavy scalar, with subsequent decay into a pair of SM-like Higgs bosons. We find that an on-shell interference effect can notably enhance the resonant di-Higgs production rate up to 40\%. In addition, consistently taking into account both the on-shell and off-shell interference effects between the heavy scalar and the SM di-Higgs diagrams significantly improves the HL-LHC and HE-LHC reach in this channel. As an example, within an effective field theory…
Determining the thermal history of electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) is an important challenge for particle physics and cosmology. Lattice simulations indicate that EWSB in the Standard Model (SM) occurs through a crossover transition, while the presence of new physics beyond the SM could alter this thermal history. The occurrence of a first order EWSB transition would be particularly interesting, providing the needed pre-conditions for generation of the cosmic matter-antimatter asymmetry and sources for potentially observable gravitational radiation. I provide simple, generic arguments tha…
We study the prospect of probing electroweak baryogenesis driven by an extra bottom Yukawa coupling $ρ_{bb}$ in a general two Higgs doublet model via electric dipole moment (EDM) measurements and at the collider experiments. The parameter space receives meaningful constraints from 125 GeV Higgs $h$ boson signal strength measurements as well as several heavy Higgs boson searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In addition, we show that the asymmetry of the CP asymmetry of inclusive $B\to X_s γ$ decay would provide complementary probe. A discovery is possible at the LHC via $bg\to bA \to b Z…
We investigate the prospective reach of the 14 TeV HL-LHC for resonant production of a heavy Higgs boson that decays to two SM-like Higgs bosons in the $4b$ final state in the scalar singlet extended Standard Model. We focus on the reach for choices of parameters yielding a strong first order electroweak phase transition. The event selection follows the $4b$ analysis by the ATLAS Collaboration, enhanced with the use of a boosted decision tree method to optimize the discrimination between signal and background events. The output of the multivariate discriminant is used directly in the statistic…
The electroweak mixing angle is a fundamental parameter of the theory of electroweak interactions. Its value has been measured precisely at the $\mathrm{Z}$-pole at colliders. In this contribution, we propose to exploit measurements of Neutral-Current Drell-Yan production at the Large Hadron Collider at large invariant dilepton masses to determine the energy scale dependence (running) of the electroweak mixing angle in the $\bar{\text{MS}}$ renormalisation scheme, $\sin^2θ_{W,\ell}^{\bar{\text{MS}}}(μ)$. Such a measurement can be used to confirm the Standard Model predictions for the $\bar{\te…
