English

Attracting the Electroweak Scale to a Tachyonic Trap

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2023-05-18 v2

Abstract

We propose a new mechanism to dynamically select the electroweak scale during inflation. An axion-like field ϕ\phi that couples quadratically to the Higgs with a large initial velocity towards a critical point ϕc\phi_c where the Higgs becomes massless. When ϕ\phi crosses this point, it enters a region where the Higgs mass is tachyonic and this results into an explosive production of Higgs particles. Consequently, a back-reaction potential is generated and the field ϕ\phi is attracted back to ϕc\phi_c. After a series of oscillations around this point it is eventually trapped in its vicinity due to the periodic term of the potential. The model avoids transplanckian field excursions, requires very few e-folds of inflation and it is compatible with inflation scales up to 105 GeV10^5~\rm GeV. The mass of ϕ\phi lies in the range of hundreds of GeV to a few TeV and it can be potentially probed in future colliders.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.13484,
  title  = {Attracting the Electroweak Scale to a Tachyonic Trap},
  author = {Sokratis Trifinopoulos and Miguel Vanvlasselaer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.13484},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

Published version, minor changes

R2 v1 2026-06-28T04:23:33.149Z