Electroweak phase transition in the nearly aligned Higgs effective field theory

TL;DR

This paper explores the electroweak phase transition using a nearly aligned Higgs effective theory, capturing non-decoupling effects of new physics and estimating associated gravitational waves.

Contribution

It introduces a nearly aligned Higgs EFT framework with finite temperature effects to better describe strongly first-order phase transitions beyond standard EFT limitations.

Findings

Identifies parameter space for strong first-order phase transition.

Estimates gravitational wave signals from the phase transition.

Shows the importance of non-decoupling effects in EFT modeling.

Abstract

We investigate the strongly first-order electroweak phase transition using an effective field theoretical approach. The standard effective field theory with finite number truncation of higher dimensional operators fails in the typical parameter space where the strongly first-order phase transition is realized because it cannot describe the non-decoupling quantum effect of new physics beyond the standard model. To parameterize the non-decoupling quantum effect, we employ the nearly aligned Higgs effective theory in which the Higgs potential is parameterized by a Coleman-Weinberg like form. Extending this framework with finite temperature corrections, we study the parameter space for realizing the strongly first-order phase transition, and estimate the gravitational wave produced at the phase transition.