English

Probing radiative electroweak symmetry breaking with colliders and gravitational waves

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2026-05-22 v4 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

Radiative symmetry breaking provides an appealing explanation for electroweak symmetry breaking and addresses the hierarchy problem. We present a comprehensive phenomenological study of this scenario, focusing on its key feature: the logarithmic-shaped potential. This potential gives rise to a relatively light scalar boson that mixes with the Higgs boson and leads to first-order phase transitions (FOPTs) in the early Universe. Our detailed analysis includes providing exact and analytical solutions for the vacuum structure and scalar interactions, classifying four patterns of cosmic thermal history, and calculating the supercooled FOPT dynamics and GWs. By combining future collider and gravitational wave experiments, we can probe the conformal symmetry breaking scales up to 10510810^5-10^8 GeV.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.03649,
  title  = {Probing radiative electroweak symmetry breaking with colliders and gravitational waves},
  author = {Wei Liu and Ke-Pan Xie},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.03649},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 7 figures + appendix + references. To match the PRD version