A phase of confined electroweak force in the early Universe
  We consider a modified cosmological history in which the presence of
beyond-the-Standard-Model physics causes the weak gauge sector,
$\mathrm{SU}(2)_L$, to confine before it is Higgsed. Under the assumption of
chiral symmetry breaking, quark and lepton weak doublets form condensates that
break the global symmetries of the Standard Model, including baryon and lepton
number, down to a $\mathrm{U}(1)$ subgroup under which only the weak singlet
fermions and Higgs transform. The weakly-coupled gauge group $\mathrm{SU}(3)_c
\times \mathrm{U}(1)_Y$ is also broken to an $\mathrm{SU}(2)_c \times
\mathrm{U}(1)_Q$ gauge group. The light states include (pseudo-)Goldstone
bosons of the global symmetry breaking, mostly-elementary fermions primarily
composed of the weak singlet quarks and leptons, and the gauge bosons of the
weakly-coupled gauge group. We discuss possible signatures from early Universe
cosmology including gravitational wave radiation, topological defects, and
baryogenesis.
