Gravitational waves from patterns of electroweak symmetry breaking: an effective perspective
Year: 2024
Type: article
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) the Higgs mechanism in a 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.
Institutions: Ningbo University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fukushima College, Peking University, National Institute of Technology, Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4405173663