Bayesian analysis of the complex singlet model with phase transition gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper investigates how future gravitational-wave detectors like Taiji can probe the complex singlet extension of the Standard Model by analyzing signals from the electroweak phase transition, linking cosmological observations with particle physics parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework connecting scalar potential parameters with gravitational-wave signals and demonstrates the potential of Taiji to constrain Higgs self-couplings and new physics.

Findings

Taiji can detect millihertz gravitational waves from the electroweak phase transition.

Bayesian analysis effectively recovers model parameters from simulated signals.

Constraints from gravitational waves complement collider measurements for new physics.

Abstract

We explore the prospects of probing the complex singlet extension of the Standard Model (CxSM) with gravitational waves from the electroweak phase transition. The study establishes a connection of the scalar potential parameters, the thermodynamic properties of the phase transition, with the directly measured stochastic gravitational-wave background in the presence of astrophysical background and foreground. Considering the space-based gravitational-wave detector Taiji, we construct a frequency-domain likelihood that incorporates instrumental and astrophysical noises, and we perform both Fisher-matrix forecasts and Bayesian nested sampling analysis. The comparison of these two approaches demonstrates consistent parameter recovery and highlights the sensitivity of Taiji to millihertz gravitational-wave signals. We further propagate the inferred constraints on the gravitational-wave spectrum back to the underlying CxSM parameters, obtaining meaningful limits on the Higgs self-couplings. The results emphasize the complementarity between gravitational-wave observations and collider measurements, showing that future missions such as Taiji can serve as a powerful probe of electroweak-scale new physics and the dynamical origin of the Higgs sector.