Electroweak phase transition in the nearly aligned Higgs effective field theory

Abstract

We investigate the strongly first-order electroweak phase transition using an effective field theoretical approach. The standard effective field theory with finite number truncation of higher dimensional operators fails in the typical parameter space where the strongly first-order phase transition is realized because it cannot describe the non-decoupling quantum effect of new physics beyond the standard model. To parameterize the non-decoupling quantum effect, we employ the nearly aligned Higgs effective theory in which the Higgs potential is parameterized by a Coleman-Weinberg like form. Extending this framework with finite temperature corrections, we study the parameter space for realizing the strongly first-order phase transition, and estimate the gravitational wave produced at the phase transition.

Comments: 28 pages, 6 figures; references added