Related papers: Mass Hierarchy and Vacuum Energy
Motivated by the stability of the electroweak Higgs vacuum we consider the possibility that the Standard Model might work up to large scales between about $10^{10}$ GeV and close to the Planck scale. A plausible scenario is an emergent…
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 argue that the hierarchy problem of the standard model of particle physics can be solved by adding a state-dependent term to the Higgs sector. We present an example of a scalar field with a Higgs-like potential with an additional term…
The so-called metastability bound asserts that an unnaturally small Higgs mass is a necessary condition for electroweak vacuum metastability, offering a new approach towards solving the hierarchy problem. So far, this result relies on the…
Motivated by the recently proposed de Sitter swampland conjecture, a formally same condition imposed instead on the convex and real exact effective potential is contemplated. Compared to the original conjecture, the modified condition…
We propose that the Standard Model is coupled to a sector with an enormous landscape of vacua, where only the dimensionful parameters--the vacuum energy and Higgs masses--are finely "scanned" from one vacuum to another, while dimensionless…
We argue that calculating vacuum energy requires quantum field theory whose axioms are adapted to curved spacetime. In this context, we suggest that non-zero vacuum energy is connected to dynamical breaking of electroweak symmetry. The…
We explore the prospects for bounding the weak scale using the weak gravity conjecture (WGC), addressing the hierarchy problem by violating the expectations of effective field theory. Building on earlier work by Cheung and Remmen, we…
With the discovery of a particle that seems rather consistent with the minimal Standard Model Higgs boson, attention turns to questions of naturalness, fine-tuning, and what they imply for physics beyond the Standard Model and its discovery…
The Standard Model Higgs potential may become unbounded from below at large field values, with important cosmological implications. For a potential of this form, the commonly assumed scenario of a nucleated thin-wall bubble driving the…
Understanding mechanisms capable of altering the vacuum energy is currently of interest in field theories and cosmology. We consider an interacting scalar field and show that the vacuum energy naturally takes any value between its maximum…
We study the theoretical correlation between the Higgs mass of the minimal standard model and the scale at which new physics is expected to occur. In addition to the classic constraints of unitarity, triviality and vacuum stability, we…
We present a minimal cosmological solution to the hierarchy problem. Our model consists of a light pseudoscalar and an extra Higgs doublet in addition to the field content of the Standard Model. We consider a landscape of vacua with varying…
The observed dark energy in the universe might give particles inertial mass. We investigate one realization of this idea, that the dark energy field might be a decayed scalar component of a supermultiplet field in the early universe that…
Scale invariance supplemented by the requirement of the absence of new heavy particles may play an important role in addressing the hierarchy problem. We discuss how the Standard Model may become scale invariant at the quantum level above a…
Even if nothing but a light Higgs is observed at the LHC, suggesting that the Standard Model is unmodified up to scales far above the weak scale, Higgs physics can yield surprises of fundamental significance for cosmology. As has long been…
We discuss the phase transition in 3+1 dimensional lambda Phi^4 theory from a very physical perspective. The particles of the symmetric phase (`phions') interact via a hard-core repulsion and an induced, long-range -1/r^3 attraction. If the…
Assuming the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) with a characteristic scale M ~ O(10) TeV, we investigate the naturalness of the Higgs sector at scales below M using an effective field theory (EFT) approach. We obtain the…
A large hierarchy between the electroweak scale and virtually any new scale of beyond-Standard-Model physics is often claimed to be unnatural. Sometimes, the apparent disparity between the measured Higgs mass and the size of the typical…
Naturalness bounds on weak scale supersymmetry in the context of radiative breaking of the electro-weak symmetry are analyzed. In the case of minimal supergravity it is found that for low tan\beta and for low values of fine tuning Phi,…