Holography and the Electroweak Phase Transition

TL;DR

This paper uses holography to analyze the phase transition in the Randall-Sundrum model at finite temperature, revealing a slow transition that could lead to an inflationary phase in the early universe.

Contribution

It provides a holographic analysis of the finite-temperature phase transition in the RS model, including transition temperature and dynamics of the universe's cooling.

Findings

Transition temperature T_c is below the TeV scale.

Transition from high to low temperature phase is very slow.

Potential for an inflationary phase during the transition.

Abstract

We study through holography the compact Randall-Sundrum (RS) model at finite temperature. In the presence of radius stabilization, the system is described at low enough temperature by the RS solution. At high temperature it is described by the AdS-Schwarzschild solution with an event horizon replacing the TeV brane. We calculate the transition temperature T_c between the two phases and we find it to be somewhat smaller than the TeV scale. Assuming that the Universe starts out at T >> T_c and cools down by expansion, we study the rate of the transition to the RS phase. We find that the transition is very slow so that an inflationary phase at the weak scale begins. The subsequent evolution depends on the stabilization mechanism: in the simplest Goldberger-Wise case inflation goes on forever unless tight bounds are satisfied by the model parameters; in slightly less-minimal cases these bounds may be relaxed.