Electroweak vacua, collider phenomenology, and possible connection with dark energy

Higher dimensional nonrenormalizable operators may modify the standard model Higgs potential in many interesting ways. Here, we consider the appearance of a second vacuum which may play an important role in cosmology. For a certain range of parameters, the usual second-order electroweak phase transition is followed by a first-order phase transition that may drive the late time accelerated expansion of the Universe. Such a potential contains kinklike solutions which in turn can play a crucial role in reconstructing the global shape of the potential in colliders, as we explicitly demonstrate.