Detectable Gravitational Waves from Very Strong Phase Transitions in the General NMSSM

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential for detectable gravitational waves originating from very strong electroweak phase transitions within the general NMSSM, highlighting a new subtraction scheme to handle radiative corrections.

Contribution

It introduces a subtraction scheme to analyze strong first-order EWPT in the NMSSM, focusing on a collider-hidden parameter region and predicting observable gravitational wave signals.

Findings

Strong first-order EWPT can produce detectable gravitational waves.

A subtraction scheme effectively manages radiative corrections in the analysis.

Potential detection of gravitational waves at eLISA depends on experimental design.

Abstract

We study the general NMSSM with an emphasis on the parameter regions with a very strong first-order electroweak phase transition (EWPT). In the presence of heavy fields coupled to the Higgs sector, the analysis can be problematic due to the existence of sizable radiative corrections. In this paper we propose a subtraction scheme that helps to circumvent this problem. For simplicity we focus on a parameter region that is by construction hidden from the current collider searches. The analysis proves that (at least) in the identified parameter region the EWPT can be very strong and striking gravitational wave signals can be produced. The corresponding gravitational stochastic background can potentially be detected at the planned space-based gravitational wave observatory eLISA, depending on the specific experiment design that will be approved.