Implications of nano-Hertz gravitational waves on electroweak phase transition in the singlet dark matter model

Abstract

Inspired by the recent evidences of nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational waves observed by the pulsar timing array collaborations, we explore their implied supercooled electroweak phase transition in the singlet extension of the standard model. Our findings reveal that by adjusting the model parameter at per milli level, the corresponding percolation temperature can be continuously lowered to 1 GeV. With such a low percolation temperature, the singlet dark matter may freeze out before the electroweak phase transition, and, consequently, the entropy generated during the transition can significantly affect the dark matter relic density. It alleviates the tension between the requirement of a strong electroweak phase transition and the constraints imposed by dark matter direct detection, and can be tested in future experiments.