New approach to electroweak symmetry nonrestoration

Abstract

Electroweak symmetry nonrestoration up to high temperatures well above the electroweak scale offers new alternatives for baryogenesis. We propose a new approach for electroweak symmetry nonrestoration via an inert Higgs sector that couples to the Standard Model Higgs as well as an extended scalar singlet sector. We implement renormalization group improvements and thermal resummation, necessary to evaluate the effective potential spanning over a broad range of energy scales and temperatures. We present examples of benchmark scenarios that allow for electroweak symmetry nonrestoration all the way up to hundreds of TeV temperatures and also feature suppressed sphaleron washout factors down to the electroweak scale. Our method for transmitting the Standard Model broken electroweak symmetry to an inert Higgs sector has several intriguing implications for (electroweak) baryogenesis and early universe thermal histories and can be scrutinized through Higgs physics phenomenology and electroweak precision measurements at the HL-LHC.