English

Can we live in a baby universe formed by a delayed first-order phase transition?

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-02-17 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We examine the idea that our universe began as a baby universe and show that this is feasible in a gauged U(1)BLU(1)_{B-L} extension of the Standard Model with the classically conformal principle. For the first time, we define a measure to describe the probability that we reside in a baby universe, and find that it can be close to 1 in a considerable portion of the parameter space. The framework is consistent with current cosmological data, and it predicts the existence of a heavy neutral gauge boson, which could be detected at colliders, thereby offering a direct link between early-universe dynamics and experimentally testable signatures at the TeV scale.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.23007,
  title  = {Can we live in a baby universe formed by a delayed first-order phase transition?},
  author = {Qing-Hong Cao and Masanori Tanaka and Jun-Chen Wang and Ke-Pan Xie and Jing-Jun Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.23007},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for publication in PRD