Related papers: The QCD Axion and Electroweak Vacuum Stability
The recently proposed dark dimension scenario reveals that axions can be localized on the Standard Model brane, thereby predicting the quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axion decay constant from the Weak Gravity Conjecture: $f_a\lesssim M_5 \sim…
Recent analysis shows that if the 125-126 GeV LHC resonance turns out to be the Standard Model Higgs boson, the electroweak vacuum would be a metastable state at 98% C.L. In this paper we argue that, during inflation, the electroweak vacuum…
In certain five dimensional gauge theories the Standard Model Higgs doublet is identified, after compactification on the orbifold S^1/Z_2, with the zero mode of the fifth component of the gauge field. An effective potential for the Higgs…
We argue that, within a broad class of extensions of the Standard Model, there is a tight corellation between the dynamics of the electroweak phase transition and the cubic self-coupling of the Higgs boson: Models which exhibit a strong…
The discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC and the measurement of its mass at around 125 GeV, taken together with the absence of signals of physics beyond the standard model, make it possible that we might live in a metastable electroweak…
I describe, from the bottom up, a sequence of natural effective field theories. Below a TeV we have the minimal standard model with a light Higgs, and an extra neutral scalar. In the 1-10 TeV region these scalars are part of a multiplet of…
We discuss the issue of vacuum stability of standard model by embedding it within the TeV scale left-right universal seesaw model (called SLRM in the text). This model has only two coupling parameters $(\lambda_1, \lambda_2)$ in the Higgs…
The Higgs boson discovery at the LHC with a mass of approximately 126 GeV suggests, that the electroweak vacuum of the standard model may be metastable at very high energies. However, any new physics beyond the standard model can change…
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…
The topological susceptibility of the QCD vacuum provides an understanding of $\theta$-vacua as vacua of a Chern-Simons gauge theory. In this way, it gives an immediate proof of the physicality of the boundary $\theta$-term. This makes the…
The effective potential of the Higgs scalar field in the Standard Model may have a second degenerate minimum at an ultrahigh vacuum expectation value. This second minimum then determines, by radiative corrections, the values of the…
The discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS has marked a milestone for particle physics. Yet, there are still many open questions that cannot be answered within the Standard Model (SM). For example, the generation…
We investigate the cosmology of an axion that is fundamentally non-compact. During inflation, fluctuations of the effectively massless field populate many QCD vacua, thereby evading conventional isocurvature constraints while generating…
In the absence of new physics around $10^{10}$ GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult…
The presence of a topological susceptibility in the electroweak sector of the Standard Model motivates the existence of a good quality weak axion $a_W$, associated with the spontaneous breaking of $B\!+\!L$. Its anomalous couplings and tiny…
We investigate the region of restored electroweak symmetry around a superconducting cosmic string coupled to the Weinberg-Salam model with an extra Higgs doublet. We show that the presence of the extra Higgs fields, and in particular their…
The cosmological Higgs vacuum stability has been an attractive research subject and it is crucial to accurately follow the development of the Higgs fluctuations. In this work, we thoroughly investigate how the vacuum fluctuations of the…
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…
The QCD axion is one of the most compelling solutions of the strong CP problem. There are major current efforts into searching for an ultralight, invisible axion, which is believed to be the only phenomenologically viable realization of the…
Models of Gauge-Higgs unification in extra dimensions offer a very elegant playground where one can study electroweak symmetry breaking. The nicest feature is that gauge symmetry itself protects the Higgs potential from divergences, thus…