Gravitational waves from the first order phase transition of the Higgs field at high energy scales

Abstract

In a wide class of new physics models, there exist scalar fields that obtain vacuum expectation values of high energy scales. We study the possibility that the standard model Higgs field has experienced first order phase transition at the high energy scale due to the couplings with these scalar fields. We estimate the amount of gravitational waves produced by the phase transition, and discuss observational consequences.