Recent Work on Gravitational Waves From a Generic Standard Model-like Effective Higgs Potential

Abstract

I present recent work on gravitational waves (GWs) from a generic Standard Model-like effective potential for the electroweak phase transition. We derive a semi-analytic expression for the approximate tunneling temperature, and analytic and approximate expressions for the two GW parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$. A quick summary of our analysis and general results, as well as a list of some specific models which easily fit into this framework, are presented. The work presented here has been done in collaboration with Stefano Profumo (arXiv:0911.0687).