Probing the Electroweak Phase Transition with Higgs Factories and Gravitational Waves

TL;DR

This paper explores how future Higgs factories and gravitational wave detectors can identify models with a first order electroweak phase transition, linking collider physics with gravitational wave astronomy.

Contribution

It surveys models with a strongly first order electroweak phase transition and evaluates their detectability via Higgs measurements and gravitational waves.

Findings

Most models with a first order phase transition can be tested at Higgs factories.

Gravitational wave signals from these models could be detected by eLISA.

Collider measurements and gravitational wave observations are complementary probes.

Abstract

After the discovery of the Higgs boson, understanding the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking and the associated electroweak phase transition has become the most pressing question in particle physics. Answering this question is a priority for experimental studies. Data from the LHC and future lepton collider-based Higgs factories may uncover new physics coupled to the Higgs boson, which can induce the electroweak phase transition to become first order. Such a phase transition generates a stochastic background of gravitational waves, which could potentially be detected by a space-based gravitational wave interferometer. In this paper, we survey a few classes of models in which the electroweak phase transition is strongly first order. We identify the observables that would provide evidence of these models at the LHC and next-generation lepton colliders, and we assess whether the corresponding gravitational wave signal could be detected by eLISA. We find that most of the models with first order electroweak phase transition can be covered by the precise measurements of Higgs couplings at the proposed Higgs factories. We also map out the model space that can be probed with gravitational wave detection by eLISA.