The Electroweak Phase Transition in the Inert Doublet Model

Understand

We study the strength of a first-order electroweak phase transition in the Inert Doublet Model (IDM), where particle dark matter (DM) is comprised of the lightest neutral inert Higgs boson.

• We improve over previous studies in the description and treatment of the finite-temperature effective potential and of the electroweak phase transition.
• We focus on a set of benchmark models inspired by the key mechanisms in the IDM leading to a viable dark matter particle candidate, and illustrate how to enhance the strength of the electroweak phase transition by adjusting the masses of the yet undiscovered IDM Higgs states.
• We argue that across a variety of DM masses, obtaining a strong enough first-order phase transition is a generic possibility in the IDM.