First Order Electroweak Phase Transition from Weakly Coupled sub-GeV Physics and Possible Connection to Fermion Flavor

Abstract

We propose that the dynamics of a scalar $\varphi$ of mass $O(10)$ MeV that is weakly coupled to the Higgs can lead to a first order electroweak phase transition, fulfilling a key requirement for baryogenesis. Stability of the model near the weak scale requires a suppressed - possibly vanishing - top Yukawa coupling to the Higgs before the transition which rises to the Standard Model value afterwards. This can be accomplished through the dynamics of $\varphi$ via a dimension-5 operator. We conjecture that the entire Standard Model flavor structure could turn on, mutatis mutandis, after the electroweak phase transition, via dimension-5 interactions of $\varphi$ suppressed by scales ranging from $O(10^3)$ TeV to near Planck mass. Due to its suppressed couplings, $\varphi$ is long-lived and can lead to missing energy signals in rare kaon decays, which can be probed by the KOTO experiment.

Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures. Replaced with the version accepted for publication in PRD. Several references and some discussion of baryogenesis added