New vacuum stability limit from cosmological history

Abstract

The stability of the electroweak vacuum imposes important constraints on new physics models. Such new physics models may introduce one or more new thermal phases with a lower free energy than that of the electroweak vacuum. In this case, the early universe may stay or have already evolved into one of these deeper vacuum states. We investigate this possibility in detail in the singlet extension of the Standard Model, and delineate the corresponding constraints in its parameter space. We also discuss the situation in supersymmetry as another example. To account for the possibility that the universe is trapped in a non-electroweak vacuum, we propose a procedure of calculating the vacuum stability limit efficiently.