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arXiv · 2610.28729

Cosmological vacuum selection in dynamical symmetry breaking at zero vacuum energy

Mateusz Duch·Alessandro Strumia
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Abstract

Coleman-Weinberg models invoke classical scale invariance to forbid scalar masses, but then add a dimensionful constant to cancel the vacuum energy of the broken vacuum. This inconsistency is avoided by special quantum potentials, whose symmetry-breaking vacuum is degenerate with the symmetric one. We compute which vacuum is selected by the thermal history of the universe. While a neutral thermal plasma favours the symmetric phase, a sufficiently large conserved charge asymmetry supports a rotating scalar condensate that evolves toward the broken vacuum as the universe cools, and survives fragmentation.

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Mateusz Duch, Alessandro Strumia. 2026-10-20. Cosmological vacuum selection in dynamical symmetry breaking at zero vacuum energy. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28729

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