Singlet-catalyzed electroweak phase transitions in the 100 TeV frontier

Abstract

We study the prospects for probing a gauge singlet scalar-driven strong first order electroweak phase transition with a future proton-proton collider in the 100 TeV range. Singlet-Higgs mixing enables resonantly-enhanced di-Higgs production, potentially aiding discovery prospects. We perform Monte Carlo scans of the parameter space to identify regions associated with a strong first-order electroweak phase transition, analyze the corresponding di-Higgs signal, and select a set of benchmark points that span the range of di-Higgs signal strengths. For the $b\bar{b}\gamma\gamma$ and $4\tau$ final states, we investigate discovery prospects for each benchmark point for the high luminosity phase of the Large Hadron Collider and for a future $pp$ collider with $\sqrt{s}$ = 50, 100, or 200 TeV. We find that any of these future collider scenarios could significantly extend the reach beyond that of the high luminosity LHC, and that with $\sqrt{s}$ = 100 TeV (200 TeV) and 30 ab$^{-1}$, the full region of parameter space favorable to strong first order electroweak phase transitions is almost fully (fully) discoverable.