Speaker
Description
We know from the discovery of the Higgs boson that electroweak symmetry is broken through the Higgs mechanism, but we expect this should be restored at high temperatures in the early universe. Thus we believe the matter in the universe underwent a dramatic change of state as the universe cooled down. Electroweak phase transitions have many important consequences, for example if strongly first order they may provide an explanation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe and could produce observable gravitational waves. I will discuss some possible experimental hints for such a phase transition, taking a critical look at connections to pulsar timing arrays and exploring the possibility that anomalies in flavour physics may hint at both an electroweak phase transition and successful electroweak baryogensis.
