Unrestored Electroweak Symmetry

Understand

The commonly assumed cosmological history of our universe is that at early-times and high-temperatures the universe went through an ElectroWeak Phase Transition (EWPT).

• Assuming an EWPT, and depending on its strength, there are many implications for baryogenesis, gravitational waves, and the evolution of the universe in general.
• However, it is not true that all spontaneously broken symmetries at zero-temperature are restored at high-temperature.
• In particular the idea of "inverse symmetry breaking" has long been established in scalar theories with evidence from both perturbative and lattice calculations.