Related papers: (No) Eternal Inflation and Precision Higgs Physics
Current measurements of Standard Model parameters suggest that the electroweak vacuum is metastable. This metastability has important cosmological implications, because large fluctuations in the Higgs field could trigger vacuum decay in the…
We study the implications of a possible unstable particle with mass $M_X<$ TeV for the Higgs stability, naturalness and inflation. We pay particular attention to the case $M_X\approx$ 750 GeV, suggested by recent results of ATLAS and CMS on…
We introduce a new approach to the Higgs naturalness problem, where the value of the Higgs mass is tied to cosmic stability and the possibility of a large observable Universe. The Higgs mixes with the dilaton of a CFT sector whose true…
We update instability and metastability bounds of the Standard Model electroweak vacuum in view of the recent ATLAS and CMS Higgs results. For a Higgs mass in the range 124--126 GeV, and for the current central values of the top mass and…
The Higgs not only induces the masses of all SM particles, the Higgs, given its special mass value, is the natural candidate for the inflaton and in fact is ruling the evolution of the early universe, by providing the necessary dark energy…
Depending on the Higgs-boson and top-quark masses, $M_H$ and $M_t$, the effective potential of the Standard Model at finite (and zero) temperature can have a deep and unphysical stable minimum $\langle \phi(T)\rangle$ at values of the field…
We analyse the self-consistency of inflation in the Standard Model, where the Higgs field has a large non-minimal coupling to gravity. We determine the domain of energies in which this model represents a valid effective field theory as a…
New physics at the TeV scale or lower may destabilise the electroweak vacuum. How low could the vacuum instability scale be? This fundamental question may be tied to a deeper understanding of the Higgs potential and its associated hierarchy…
In previous publications we have proposed that Inflation can be realized in a second minimum of the Standard Model Higgs potential at energy scales of about $10^{16}$ GeV, if the minimum is not too deep and if a mechanism which allows a…
Estimates of the Higgs and top quark masses, $m_{H} \simeq 125.10 \pm 0.14$ [GeV] and $m_{t} \simeq 172.76 \pm 0.30$ [GeV] based on the experimental results place the Standard Model in the region of the metastable vacuum. A consequence of…
We study the stability of the electroweak vacuum in low-scale inflation models whose Hubble parameter is much smaller than the instability scale of the Higgs potential. In general, couplings between the inflaton and Higgs are present, and…
We study the inflationary evolution of a scalar field $h$ with an unstable potential for the case where the Hubble parameter $H$ during inflation is larger than the instability scale $\Lambda_I$ of the potential. Quantum fluctuations in the…
The discovery of the Higgs by ATLAS and CMS at the LHC not only provided the last missing building block of the electroweak Standard Model, the mass of the Higgs has been found to have a very peculiar value about 126 GeV, which is such that…
Recent measurements at the LHC suggest that the current Higgs vacuum could be metastable with a modest barrier (height 10^{10-12}{GeV})^{4}) separating it from a ground state with negative vacuum density of order the Planck scale. We note…
It is widely believed that, for a given Top mass, the Higgs mass has a lower bound: if m_Higgs is too small, the Higgs vacuum is unstable due to Top dynamics. From vacuum instability, the state-of-the-art calculation of the lower bound is…
The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favoured over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies…
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, and especially the determination of its mass around 125 GeV, together with the absence of any trace of new physics make it conceivable that we live in a metastable (but long-lived) electroweak…
According to the current experimental data, the Higgs vacuum appears to be metastable due to the development of a second lower ground state in its potential. Consequently, vacuum decay would induce the nucleation of true vacuum bubbles with…
Light states associated with the hierarchy problem affect the Higgs LHC production and decays. We illustrate this within the MSSM and two simple extensions applying the latest bounds from LHC Higgs searches. Large deviations in the Higgs…
Using a physical renormalisation scheme we derive mass-dependent renormalisation group equations for the running of the Higgs quartic coupling within the Standard Model. Subsequently, we accurately take into account weak scale thresholds,…