Electroweak asymmetric early Universe via a scalar condensate

Finite temperature effects in the Standard Model tend to restore the electroweak symmetry in the early universe, but new fields coupled to the Higgs field may as well reverse this tendency, leading to the so-called electroweak symmetry nonrestoration (EW SNR) scenario. Previous works on EW SNR often assume that the reversal is due to the thermal fluctuations of new fields with negative quartic couplings to the Higgs, and they tend to find that a large number of new fields are required. We observe that EW SNR can be minimally realized if the field(s) coupled to the Higgs field develop(s) a stable condensate. We show that one complex scalar field with a sufficiently large global-charge asymmetry can develop a condensate as an outcome of thermalization and keep the electroweak symmetry broken up to temperatures well above the electroweak scale. In addition to providing a minimal benchmark model, our work hints on a class of models involving scalar condensates that yield electroweak symmetry nonrestoration in the early universe.

Automated summary

Finite temperature effects in the early universe tend to restore the electroweak symmetry in the Standard Model, but new fields coupled to the Higgs field may reverse this tendency, leading to electroweak symmetry nonrestoration. Previous studies assumed that this reversal is due to thermal fluctuations of new fields, but we found that it can be minimally realized if the fields coupled to the Higgs field develop a stable condensate.