Related papers: Late-time vacuum phase transitions: Connecting sub…
We update the constraints on the fraction of the Universe that may have gone into primordial black holes (PBHs) over the mass range $10^{-5}\text{--}10^{50}$ g. Those smaller than $\sim 10^{15}$ g would have evaporated by now due to Hawking…
Sufficiently large scalar perturbations in the early Universe can create over-dense regions that collapse into primordial black holes (PBH). This process is accompanied by the emission of scalar-induced gravitational waves (SIGW) that…
We derive constraints on the injection of free-streaming dark radiation after big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) by considering the decay of a massive hidden sector particle into dark radiation. Such a scenario has the potential to alleviate…
After a review of CMBR correlations and recent observations, a study of possible CMBR observations of the QCD early universe phase transition is discussed. A model for the QCD bubble walls gives the surface tension found in lattice…
The Universe may contain sufficiently small size matter-antimatter domains at temperatures of a few hundred MeV, without violating the success of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We demonstrate that this possibility enhances the keV scale sterile…
The recent cosmological picture contains a significant tension indicating that our standard $\Lambda$CDM picture may be incomplete. Early Dark Energy models can alleviate the Hubble tension, by assuming an early acceleration that could…
Collisions of vacuum bubbles in the early Universe can act as cosmic-scale high-energy colliders with energy reach close to the Planck scale. Such "cosmic colliders" would represent the most energetic phenomena in our cosmic history,…
Supersymmetry is a highly motivated theoretical framework, whose scale of breaking may be at PeV energies, to explain null searches at the Large Hadron Collider. SUSY breaking through a first order phase transition may have occurred in the…
This talk reviews our recent work showing how tiny black holes can act as nucleation sites for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. We start by discussing the formation of thin wall bubbles of true vacuum inside a false vacuum, and…
Primordial black holes could potentially form during a first-order cosmological phase transition due to a build-up of particles which are predominantly reflected from the advancing bubble walls. After discussing the general mechanism, we…
We investigate the possibility of a dark energy component that is scaling with epochs. A phenomenological model is introduced whose energy density depends on the redshift in such a way that a smooth transition among the three dominant…
First-order phase transitions produce gravitational waves and primordial black holes. They always occur in field theories where symmetries are radiatively broken and masses are correspondingly generated. These theories predict a period of…
The observed cosmological constant may originate as the minimum value $U_{min}$ of a scalar field potential, where the scalar field is frozen due to a large mass. If this vacuum is metastable, it may decay to a true vacuum either at present…
We consider relatively heavy neutrinos $\nu_H$, mostly contributing to a sterile state $\nu_s$, with mass in the range 10 MeV $\lesssim m_s \lesssim m_{\pi} \sim 135$ MeV, which are thermally produced in the early universe in collisional…
The existence of a second Higgs doublet in Nature could lead to a cosmological first order electroweak phase transition and explain the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. We explore the parameter space of such a…
Motivated by the stability of the electroweak Higgs vacuum we consider the possibility that the Standard Model might work up to large scales between about $10^{10}$ GeV and close to the Planck scale. A plausible scenario is an emergent…
We propose a new alternative to the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) paradigm for dark matter. Rather than being determined by thermal freeze-out, the dark matter abundance in this scenario is set by dark matter decay, which is…
We discuss some cosmological implications of extensions of the Standard Model with hidden sector scalars coupled to the Higgs boson. We put special emphasis on the conformal case, in which the electroweak symmetry is broken radiatively with…
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) might have formed in the early Universe as a consequence of the collapse of density fluctuations with an amplitude above a critical value $\delta_{c}$: the formation threshold. Although for a…
The decay of metastable 'false vacuum' states via bubble nucleation plays a crucial role in many cosmological scenarios. Cold-atom analog experiments will soon provide the first empirical probes of this process, with potentially…