The Electroweak Phase Transition: Corralling the Higgs with Colliders & Cosmology
Andrew J. Long · PhDT · 2014
Through this thesis, I investigate the way in which the electroweak phase transition, and therefore the Higgs boson, bridges high energy particle physics and early universe cosmology; moreover, I argue that it is particularly interesting to explore this bridge today as experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider begin to uncover the nature of physics at the electroweak scale. I will discuss how measurements of the properties of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider allow one to determine the nature of the phase transition that was responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking in the early universe. That information in turn will allow one to assess whether the asymmetry between the abundances of matter and anti-matter in the universe may have been generated during the electroweak phase transition. Additionally, I will discuss the impact of the electroweak phase transition on another cosmological relic: namely, the dark matter. Precise measurements of the mass and abundance of dark matter today yield further information about the nature of the electroweak phase transition, in some scenarios. This information may be used to test the hypothesis that the cosmological constant, assumed to be a good model of dark energy, is finely tuned. In this way, I hope to demonstrate the importance of the electroweak phase transition as a bridge between terrestrial tests of high energy physics and cosmological tests of the physics of the early universe.