Electroweak epoch in the context of "Electroweak scale"

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👉 Electroweak epoch in the context of Electroweak scale

In particle physics, the electroweak scale, also known as the Fermi scale, is the energy scale around 246 GeV, a typical energy of processes described by the electroweak theory. The particular number 246 GeV is taken to be the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field (where is the Fermi coupling constant). In some cases the term electroweak scale is used to refer to the temperature of electroweak symmetry breaking, 159.5±1.5 GeV. In other cases, the term is used more loosely to refer to energies in a broad range around 10 - 10 GeV. This is within reach of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is designed for about 10 GeV in proton–proton collisions.

Interactions may have been above this scale during the electroweak epoch. In the unextended Standard Model, the transition from the electroweak epoch was not a first or a second order phase transition but a continuous crossover, preventing any baryogenesis. However many extensions to the standard model including supersymmetry and the inert double model have a first order electroweak phase transition (but still lack additional CP violation).

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Electroweak epoch in the context of Quark epoch

In physical cosmology, the quark epoch was the period in the evolution of the early universe when the fundamental interactions of gravitation, electromagnetism, the strong interaction and the weak interaction had taken their present forms, but the temperature of the universe was still too high to allow quarks to bind together to form hadrons. The quark epoch began approximately 10 seconds after the Big Bang, when the preceding electroweak epoch ended as the electroweak interaction separated into the weak interaction and electromagnetism. During the quark epoch, the universe was filled with a dense, hot quark–gluon plasma, containing quarks, leptons and their antiparticles. Collisions between particles were too energetic to allow quarks to combine into mesons or baryons. The quark epoch ended when the universe was about 10 seconds old, when the average energy of particle interactions had fallen below the binding energy of hadrons. The following period, when quarks became confined within hadrons, is known as the hadron epoch.

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