English

Unrestored Electroweak Symmetry

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2019-02-06 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

The commonly assumed cosmological history of our universe is that at early-times and high-temperatures the universe went through an ElectroWeak Phase Transition (EWPT). Assuming an EWPT, and depending on its strength, there are many implications for baryogenesis, gravitational waves, and the evolution of the universe in general. However, it is not true that all spontaneously broken symmetries at zero-temperature are restored at high-temperature. In particular the idea of "inverse symmetry breaking" has long been established in scalar theories with evidence from both perturbative and lattice calculations. In this letter we demonstrate that with a simple extension of the SM it is possible that the ElectroWeak (EW) symmetry was always broken or only temporarily passed through a symmetry restored phase. These novel phase histories have many cosmological and collider implications that we discuss. The model presented here serves as a useful benchmark comparison for future attempts to discern the phase of our universe at TT\gtrsim a few GeV.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.07578,
  title  = {Unrestored Electroweak Symmetry},
  author = {Patrick Meade and Harikrishnan Ramani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.07578},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

7 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:07:51.685Z