Fermion dark matter effect on electroweak phase transition

Abstract The addition of extra scalars to the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics enriches the vacuum structure and consequently gives rise to strong first-order phase transitions (EWPT) in the early universe. We raise the question that how the EWPT is affected by the addition of fermions in models beyond the SM, and address this question by studying the EWPT in a dark matter model comprising a singlet scalar and two Dirac fermions. The singlet scalar develops a nonzero vacuum expectation value (VEV), and the lighter fermion plays the role of the dark matter. The model evades the stringent direct detection bounds due to the presence of two fermions. We first show that applying the high-temperature approximation, no first-order phase transition is found. Then we demonstrate that when including the full finite temperature corrections to the effective potential, the first-order phase transition becomes possible, nevertheless, all the phase transitions will be weak. We therefore deduce that the addition of fermions reduces the strength of the EWPT.