Related papers: Unusual Higgs or Supersymmetry from Natural Electr…
We examine the use of modified Higgs sectors to address the little hierarchy problem of supersymmetry. Such models reduce weak-scale fine-tuning by allowing lighter stops, but they retain some fine-tuning independent of the Higgs. The…
Dynamical symmetry breaking provides a possible solution to the electroweak hierarchy problem. It requires new strong interactions that are effective at some high-energy scale. If there is no light Higgs boson, this scale is constrained to…
We present `twin Higgs models', simple realizations of the Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson that protect the weak scale from radiative corrections up to scales of order 5 - 10 TeV. In the ultra-violet these theories have a discrete…
We explore phenomenological implications of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) with a strong supersymmetry breaking trilinear term. Supersymmetry breaking can trigger electroweak symmetry breaking via a symmetry-breaking…
We revisit in some more detail a recent specific proposal for the breaking of the electroweak symmetry and of supersymmetry by a compact extra dimension. Possible mass terms for the Higgs and the matter hypermultiplets are considered and…
We give a brief review of recent developments in non-supersymmetric models for electroweak symmetry breaking, including little Higgs, composite Higgs and Higgsless theories. The new ideas such as extra dimensions, AdS/CFT correspondence,…
We present an extended study of how the Next to Minimal Supersymmetric Model easily avoids fine-tuning in electroweak symmetry breaking for a SM-like light Higgs with mass in the vicinity of $100\gev$, as beautifully consistent with…
The quest for the physics underlying the breaking of the electroweak symmetry and the generation of mass is surveyed.
Solutions to the electroweak hierarchy problem typically introduce a new symmetry to stabilize the quadratic ultraviolet sensitivity in the self-energy of the Higgs boson. The new symmetry is either broken softly or collectively, as for…
These lectures provide a concise introduction to the so-called "Beyond the Standard Model"' physics, with particular emphasis on the problem of the microscopic origin of the Higgs mass term and of the Electro-Weak symmetry breaking scale in…
The Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model (NMSSM) with a Higgs boson of mass 125 GeV can be compatible with stop masses of order of the electroweak scale, thereby reducing the degree of fine-tuning necessary to…
The mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking in Little Higgs Models is analyzed in an effective field theory approach. This enables us to identify observable effects irrespective of the specific structure and content of the heavy degrees…
These lectures focus on the structure of various Higgs boson theories. Topics in the first lectures include: mass generation in chiral theories, spontaneous symmetry breaking, neutrino masses, perturbative unitarity, vacuum stability,…
Naturalness of electroweak symmetry breaking in the next-to-minimal supersymmetric model points to scenarios in which the lightest CP-even Higgs boson has SM-like ZZh coupling and mass m_h ~ 100 GeV and decays partly via h -> b \bar b but…
As is well known, electroweak breaking in the MSSM requires substantial fine-tuning. We explain why this fine tuning problem is abnormally acute, and this allows to envisage possible solutions to this undesirable situation. Following these…
We discuss the Higgs sector of the supersymmetric standard model extended by a gauge singlet for the range of parameters, which is compatible with universal soft supersymmetry breaking terms at the GUT scale. We present results for the…
We review strongly coupled and extra dimensional models of electroweak symmetry breaking. Models examined include warped extra dimensions, bulk Higgs, "little" Higgs, dilaton Higgs, composite Higgs, twin Higgs, quantum critical Higgs, and…
The electroweak symmetry may be broken by a composite Higgs which arises naturally as a bound state of the top quark if the standard model gauge fields and fermions propagate in extra dimenions. The top quark mass and the Higgs mass can be…
`Little Higgs' models, in which the Higgs particle arises as a pseudo-Goldstone boson, have a natural mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking associated with the large value of the top quark Yukawa coupling. The mechanism typically…
We discuss the mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetric versions of the standard model. After briefly reviewing the possible sources of supersymmetry breaking, we show how the required pattern of symmetry breaking can…