Probing Trans-Electroweak First Order Phase Transitions from Gravitational Waves

Abstract

We propose direct tests of very high energy first-order phase transitions, which are elusive to collider physics, deploying the gravitational waves’ measurements. We show that first-order phase transitions lying in a large window of critical temperatures, which is considerably larger than the electroweak energy scale, can be tested from advanced LIGO (aLIGO) and the Einstein Telescope. This provides the possibility to probe several inflationary mechanisms ending with the inflaton in a false minimum and high-energy first order phase transitions that are due to new scalar bosons, beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. As an important example, we consider the axion monodromy inflationary scenario and analyze the potential for its experimental verification, deploying the gravitational wave interferometers.