Cosmological Phase Transition of Spontaneous Confinement

Understand

The dynamics of a cosmological (de)confinement phase transition is studied in nearly conformally invariant field theories, where confinement is predominantly spontaneously generated and associated with a light "dilaton" field.

• We show how the leading contribution to the transition rate can be computed within the dilaton effective theory.
• In the context of Composite Higgs theories, we demonstrate that a simple scenario involving two renormalization-group fixed points can make the transition proceed much more rapidly than in the minimal scenario, thereby avoiding excessive dilution of matter abundances generated before the transition.
• The implications for gravitational wave phenomenology are discussed.