Related papers: Hubble selection of the weak scale from QCD quantu…
Assuming a tricritical point of the two--flavor QCD in the space of temperature, baryon number chemical potential and quark mass, we study the change of the associated soft mode along the critical line within the Ginzburg--Landau approach…
The article addresses a possibility of obtaining cosmologically relevant effects from the quantum nature of the Hubble horizon. Following the observation made by E.~Bianchi and C.~Rovelli in Phys.\ Rev.\ D {\bf 84} (2011) 027502 we explore…
The quantum gravitational scale of inflation is calculated by finding a sharp probability peak in the distribution function of chaotic inflationary cosmologies driven by a scalar field with large negative constant $\xi$ of nonminimal…
An extension of the Standard Model with three right-handed neutrinos and a simple invisible axion model can account for all experimentally confirmed signals of new physics (neutrino oscillations, dark matter and baryon asymmetry) in…
We study induced nucleation by considering the accumulation rate of shrinking subcritical bubbles. We derive the probability for a collection of subcritical bubbles to form a critical bubble, and argue that this mechanism could well play a…
We propose a new mechanism to suppress the axion isocurvature perturbation, while producing the right amount of axion dark matter, within the framework of supersymmetric axion models with the axion scale induced by supersymmetry breaking.…
One of the distinctive feature of the QCD phase diagram is the possible emergence of a critical endpoint. The critical region around the critical point and the path dependency of the critical exponents is investigated within effective…
The recent local measurement of the Hubble constant based on the distance-ladder method has reached a $1.91\%$ precision, but this result is in tension with the early-universe measurements at the more than 4$\sigma$ level, bringing a crisis…
A hierarchically small weak scale does not generally coincide with enhanced symmetry, but it may still be exceptional with respect to vacuum energy. By analyzing the classical vacuum energy as a function of parameters such as the Higgs…
We show that the upper bound of the classical QCD axion window can be significantly relaxed for low-scale inflation. If the Gibbons-Hawking temperature during inflation is lower than the QCD scale, the initial QCD axion misalignment angle…
We propose a framework in which Weinberg's anthropic explanation of the cosmological constant problem also solves the hierarchy problem. The weak scale is selected by chiral dynamics that controls the stabilization of an extra dimension.…
We consider the application of the multiple point criticality principle to the pure Standard Model, with a desert up to the Planck scale. According to this principle, Nature should choose coupling constant values such that the vacuum can…
Various scenarios of the initial inflation of the universe are distinguished by the choice of a scalar field {\em potential} $U(\phi)$ which simulates a {\it temporarily} non--vanishing {\em cosmological term}. Our new method, which…
The abundance of the QCD axion is known to be suppressed if the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is lower than the QCD scale, and if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We show that the tight upper bound on the inflation…
We prove a long-standing conjecture on random-cluster models, namely that the critical point for such models with parameter $q\geq1$ on the square lattice is equal to the self-dual point $p_{sd}(q) = \sqrt q /(1+\sqrt q)$. This gives a…
We describe a new phenomenon in quantum cosmology: self-organised localisation. When the fundamental parameters of a theory are functions of a scalar field subject to large fluctuations during inflation, quantum phase transitions can act as…
Quantum gravity (QG) has a natural cutoff given by the Planck scale $M_{\rm pl}$. However, it is known that the EFT of gravity can break down at a lower scale, the species scale $\Lambda_s\lesssim M_{\rm pl}$, if there are light species of…
Recently we have made considerable progress in our understanding of the behavior of QCD in extreme conditions of high temperature or large baryon number density. Among the highlights are the prediction of a well-characterized true critical…
We examine the inflationary modes in the cubic curvature theories in the context of asymptotically safe gravity. On the phase space of the Hubble parameter, there exists a critical point which corresponds to the slow-roll inflation in…
We present a cosmological solution to the electroweak hierarchy problem. After discussing general features of cosmological approaches to naturalness, we extend the Standard Model with two light scalars very weakly coupled to the Higgs and…