Related papers: Electroweak Vacuum Stabilized by Moduli during/aft…
Higgs Inflation via a metastable Standard Model Higgs Potential is possible if the effective Planck mass in the Jordan frame increases after inflation ends. Here we consider the predictions of this model independently of the dynamics…
We present a new solution to the hierarchy problem, where the Higgs mass is at its observed electroweak value because such a patch inflates the most in the early universe. If the Higgs mass depends on a field undergoing quantum fluctuations…
We consider the possibility that the gauge hierarchy is a byproduct of the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, i.e., that whatever mechanism is responsible for the latter also sets the running Higgs mass to a value smaller than its…
The problem of the stabilization of moduli is discussed within the context of compactified strongly coupled heterotic string theory. It is shown that all geometric, vector bundle and five-brane moduli are completely fixed, within a…
We demonstrate that Standard Model vacuum stability exhibits extreme sensitivity to the Higgs quartic coupling: a mere 3\% enhancement represents the critical threshold separating metastability from absolute stability with UV Landau poles.…
We analyse effective potential around the electroweak (EW) scale in the Standard Model extended with a heavy scalar doublet. We show that the additional scalars can have a strong impact on vacuum stability. Although the additional heavy…
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…
Chaotic inflation predicts a large gravitational wave signal which can be tested by the upcoming Planck satellite. We discuss a SUGRA implementation of chaotic inflation in the presence of moduli fields, and find that inflation does not…
Heterotic orbifold compactifications yield a myriad of models that reproduce many properties of the supersymmetric extension of the standard model and provide potential solutions to persisting problems of high energy physics, such as the…
We argue that moduli stabilization generically restricts the evolution following transitions between weakly coupled de Sitter vacua and can induce a strong selection bias towards inflationary cosmologies. The energy density of domain walls…
In supersymmetric theories a field can develop a vacuum expectation value $M \gg 10^3\,{\rm GeV}$, even though its mass $m$ is of order $10^2$ to $10^3\,{\rm GeV}$. The finite temperature in the early Universe can hold such a field at zero,…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
The stability of the electroweak vacuum imposes important constraints on new physics models. Such new physics models may introduce one or more new thermal phases with a lower free energy than that of the electroweak vacuum. In this case,…
We discuss the cosmological constant puzzle and possible connections to the (meta-)stability of the Higgs vacuum suggested by recent LHC results. A possible explanation involves new critical phenomena in the ultraviolet, close to the Planck…
In theories beyond the Standard Model, in particular in theories with extra spatial dimensions such as superstring theory, there are a large number of scalar fields which appear in the low energy effective action. These moduli fields must…
We consider the introduction of a complex scalar field carrying a global lepton number charge to the Standard Model and the Higgs inflation framework. The conditions are investigated under which this model can simultaneously ensure Higgs…
We consider cosmological scenarios in which density perturbations are generated by the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field at early times; the late time dynamics involves a modulus which first dominates the energy density of the…
We perform a manifestly gauge-independent analysis of the vacuum stability in the Standard Model (SM) including two-loop matching, three-loop renormalization group evolution, and pure QCD corrections through four loops. All these…
We point out that the prediction of the minimal chaotic inflation model is altered if a scalar field takes a large field value close to the Planck scale during inflation due to a negative Hubble induced mass. In particular, we show that 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…