Fate of electroweak symmetry in the early Universe: Non-restoration and trapped vacua in the N2HDM

Abstract

Extensions of the Higgs sector of the Standard Model allow for a rich cosmological history around the electroweak scale. We show that besides the possibility of strong first-order phase transitions, which have been thoroughly studied in the literature, also other important phenomena can occur, like the non-restoration of the electroweak symmetry or the existence of vacua in which the Universe becomes trapped, preventing a transition to the electroweak minimum. Focusing on the next-to-minimal two-Higgs-doublet model (N2HDM) of type II and taking into account the existing theoretical and experimental constraints, we identify the scenarios of electroweak symmetry non-restoration, vacuum trapping and first-order phase transition in the thermal history of the Universe. We analyze these phenomena and in particular their relation to each other, and discuss their connection to the predicted phenomenology of the N2HDM at the LHC. Our analysis demonstrates that the presence of a global electroweak minimum of the scalar potential at zero temperature does not guarantee that the corresponding N2HDM parameter space will be physically viable: the existence of a critical temperature at which the electroweak phase becomes the deepest minimum is not sufficient for a transition to take place, necessitating an analysis of the tunnelling probability to the electroweak minimum for a reliable prediction of the thermal history of the Universe.

44 pages, 10 figures. Final version published in JCAP

References in corpus (15)

• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• SusHi: A program for the calculation of Higgs production in gluon fusion and bottom-quark annihilation in the Standard Model and the MSSM
• The oblique parameters in multi-Higgs-doublet models
• A precision constraint on multi-Higgs-doublet models
• Dynamics of Non-renormalizable Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
• HiggsSignals-2: Probing new physics with precision Higgs measurements in the LHC 13 TeV era
• Strong First Order Electroweak Phase Transition in the CP-Conserving 2HDM Revisited
• Echoes of the Electroweak Phase Transition: Discovering a second Higgs doublet through $A_0\to H_{0}Z$
• On the validity of perturbative studies of the electroweak phase transition in the Two Higgs Doublet model
• The Higgs Vacuum Uplifted: Revisiting the Electroweak Phase Transition with a Second Higgs Doublet
• Extending two-Higgs-doublet models by a singlet scalar field - the Case for Dark Matter
• Robust approach to thermal resummation: Standard Model meets a singlet
• Impact of Vacuum Stability Constraints on the Phenomenology of Supersymmetric Models
• Global Electroweak Symmetric Vacuum

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Cosmology with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
• Cosmological phase transitions: from perturbative particle physics to gravitational waves
• The CMS di-photon excess at 95 GeV in view of the LHC Run 2 results
• How arbitrary are perturbative calculations of the electroweak phase transition?
• The trap in the early Universe: impact on the interplay between gravitational waves and LHC physics in the 2HDM
• Excesses in the low-mass Higgs-boson search and the W-boson mass measurement
• Primordial black holes as dark matter: Interferometric tests of phase transition origin
• Turn up the volume: Listening to phase transitions in hot dark sectors
• A New Approach to Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration
• General relativity effects in precision spin experimental tests of fundamental symmetries
• HHH Whitepaper
• First shot of the smoking gun: probing the electroweak phase transition in the 2HDM with novel searches for $A\to ZH$ in ${\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}t\bar{t}$ and $\nu \nu b\bar{b}$ final states
• A concise review on some Higgs-related new physics models in light of current experiments
• Self Consistent Thermal Resummation: A Case Study of the Phase Transition in 2HDM
• Resonant top pair searches at the LHC: a window to electroweak phase transition
• Electroweak Asymmetric Early Universe via a Scalar Condensate
• Electroweak Symmetry Non-Restoration from Dark Matter
• Baryogenesis from spontaneous CP violation in the early Universe
• $\nu$ Electroweak Baryogenesis: The Scalar Singlet Strikes Back
• Towards TeV-Scale Supersymmetric Electroweak Baryogenesis
• Type-II Majoron Dark Matter
• Vacuum (meta-)stability in the $\mu \nu$SSM
• Intermediate Charge-Breaking Phases and Symmetry Non-Restoration in the 2-Higgs-Doublet Model
• Benchmarking a fading window: electroweak baryogenesis in the C2HDM, LHC constraints after Run 2 and prospects for LISA
• Minimal Electroweak Baryogenesis via Domain Walls
• Reconciling Higgs physics and pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone dark matter in the S2HDM using a genetic algorithm
• Top-quark spin correlations as a tool to distinguish pseudoscalar $A\to ZH$ and scalar $H\to ZA$ signatures in $Zt\bar{t}$ final states at the LHC
• Fast multilabel classification of HEP constraints with deep learning
• Confronting the broken phase N2HDM with Higgs Data
• Investigating a strong first-order electroweak phase transition in the RxSM at future linear $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ colliders and LISA
• Early Universe hypercharge breaking and neutrino mass generation
• Mounting evidence for a 95 GeV Higgs boson