Search

The symmetry can be broken at high temperature and then restored at low temperature, which is the so-called \emph{high temperature symmetry breaking}. It often appears in some theories such as the high scale electroweak baryogenesis mechanism. In this paper, we probe the high temperature $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry breaking with gravitational waves (GWs) from domain wall annihilation. We first introduce a scalar with $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry and few of singlet fermions that interact with scalar through a five-dimension operator. This can lead to the scalar potential has a non-zero minimum at high temperature. At the early stage, the scalar is pinned at symmetric phase due to the large Hubble fraction. When the scalar thermal mass becomes comparable to the Hubble parameter, it can quickly roll down to the minimum of potential. Then the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry is spontaneously broken and the domain walls will form. With the decrease of temperature, $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry will be restored. We find that if domain walls are formed at $\mathcal{O}(10^{9})~ \rm GeV$, the GW produced by domain wall annihilation is expected to be observed by BBO, CE and ET. In addition, we also discuss the relationships between this scenario and NANOGrav signal.

In this paper we propose a new approach for the spontaneous breaking and restoration of the $SU(3)_C$ color symmetry in the framework of electroweak symmetry non-restoration (EWSNR) at high temperature, which provides an alternative approach for the Baryogenesis. Due to the exotic high vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the SM Higgs doublet in EWSNR, the color symmetry can be spontaneous broken succeeding the electroweak phase transition whenever there is a negative quartic coupling between the SM Higgs and a scalar color triplet. The color symmetry is then restored at low temperature as the VEV of SM Higgs evolving to small value. We show that the phase transitions related to color breaking and restoration can be first order, and the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) signals are smoking-gun of these processes. We demonstrate the possibility of detecting these GW signals in future GW experiments such as DECIGO and BBO., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

If dark matter (DM) acquires mass during a first order phase transition, there will be a filtering-out effect when DM enters the expanding bubble. In this paper we study the filtering-out effect for a pseudo-scalar DM, whose mass may partially come from a first order phase transition in the hidden sector. We calculate the ratio of DM that may enter the bubble for various bubble wall velocities as well as various status of DM (in the thermal equilibrium, or out of the thermal equilibrium) at the time of phase transition, which results in small penetration rate that may affect the final relic abundance of the DM. We further study the stochastic gravitational wave signals emitted by the hidden sector phase transition at the space-based interferometer experiments as the smoking-gun of this model., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures

We study how the Roberge-Weiss (RW) transition depends on the pattern of center symmetry breaking using a $\mathbb{Z}_{3}$-QCD model. We adopt flavor-dependent quark imaginary chemical potentials, namely $(\mu_{u},\mu_{d},\mu_{s})/iT=(\theta-2\pi{C}/3,\,\theta,\,\theta+2\pi{C}/3)$ with $C\in[0,1]$. The RW periodicity is guaranteed and the center symmetry of $\mathbb{Z}_{3}$-QCD is explicitly broken when $C\neq{1}$ or/and quark masses are non-degenerate. For $N_{f}=3$ and $C\neq{1}$, the RW transition occurs at $\theta=\theta_{RW}=(2k+1)\pi/3\,(k\in\mathbb{Z})$, which becomes stronger with decrease of $C$. When $C={1}$, the $\theta_{RW}$ turns into $2k\pi/3$ for $N_{f}=2+1$, but keeps $(2k+1)\pi/3$ for $N_{f}=1+2$; in both cases, the RW transitions get stronger with the mass mismatch. For other $C\neq{0}$ cases, the $\theta_{RW}$'s are not integral multiples of $\pi/3$. We find that the RW transition is more sensitive to the deviation of $C$ from one compared to the mass non-degeneracy and thus the strength of the traditional RW transition with $C=0$ is the strongest. The nature of RW endpoints and its implications to deconfinement transition are investigated., Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures; rewritten version; some wrong conclusions and interpretations corrected; conferences added