A New Approach to Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method for achieving electroweak symmetry non-restoration at high temperatures using an inert Higgs sector coupled with an extended scalar singlet, with implications for baryogenesis and collider physics.

Contribution

It proposes a new approach involving an inert Higgs sector and scalar singlet, with renormalization and thermal resummation, enabling electroweak symmetry non-restoration at very high temperatures.

Findings

Electroweak symmetry remains broken up to hundreds of TeV temperatures.

Suppressed sphaleron washout factors are achievable at the electroweak scale.

The approach has testable implications for Higgs physics and precision measurements.

Abstract

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 way up to hundreds of TeV temperatures, and also feature suppressed sphaleron washout factors down to the electroweak scale. Our method for transmitting the Standard Model broken electroweak symmetry to an inert Higgs sector has several intriguing implications for (electroweak) baryogenesis, early universe thermal histories, and can be scrutinized through Higgs physics phenomenology and electroweak precision measurements at the HL-LHC.