Abstract
We explore and contrast the capabilities of future colliders to probe the nature of the electro-weak phase transition. We focus on the real singlet scalar field extension of the Standard Model, representing the most minimal, yet most elusive, framework that can enable a strong first-order electro-weak phase transition. By taking into account the theoretical uncertainties and employing the powerful complementarity between gauge and Higgs boson pair channels in the searches for new scalar particles, we find that a 100 TeV proton collider has the potential to confirm or falsify a strong first-order transition. Our results hint towards this occurring relatively early in its lifetime. Furthermore, by extrapolating down to 27 TeV, we find that a lower-energy collider may also probe a large fraction of the parameter space, if not all. Such early discoveries would allow for precise measurements of the new phenomena to be obtained at future colliders and would pave the way to definitively verify whether this is indeed the physical remnant of a scalar field that catalyses a strong first-order transition.
Highlights
One of the biggest scientific questions that could be answered by the largest next-generation experiments is “What was the nature of the cosmological electro-weak symmetry breaking?” [1,2,3]
If the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) was strongly first order, a property that we shall discuss below in detail, signatures would potentially be detectable at spacebased gravitational wave observatories such as LISA [2] or Decigo [4], whose sensitivities peak at the millihertz to the decihertz range, frequencies that would occur if a phase transition took place at the electro-weak scale [5,6,7]
Our results show that the “Centrist” and “Loose” categories behave in a similar fashion, whereas the “Liberal” category of the first classification has no correspondence in the second and allows for larger theoretical uncertainties
Summary
One of the biggest scientific questions that could be answered by the largest next-generation experiments is “What was the nature of the cosmological electro-weak symmetry breaking?” [1,2,3]. We strive to include the theoretical uncertainties when approaching the question of what collider specifications are needed to uncover the nature of the EWPT. The structure is as follows: in section 2 we outline the model that forms the focus of our investigations, the real singlet scalar field extension of the SM.
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