Related papers: Hubble selection of the weak scale from QCD quantu…
Measurements of the Higgs boson and top quark masses indicate that the Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable around $\Lambda_I \sim 10^{11}$ GeV. This instability is cosmologically relevant since quantum fluctuations during…
In the standard inflationary paradigm the inhomogeneities observed in the CMB arise from quantum fluctuations of an initially homogeneous and isotropic vacuum state. This picture suffers from two well-known weaknesses. First, it assumes…
A quantum thermodynamic system can conserve non-commuting observables, but the consequences of this phenomenon on relaxation are still not fully understood. We investigate this problem by leveraging an observable-dependent approach to…
We investigate the short time quantum critical dynamics in the imaginary time relaxation processes of finite size systems. Universal scaling behaviors exist in the imaginary time evolution and in particular, the system undergoes a critical…
We explore the Higgs particle in the cosmic quark-gluon plasma (QGP) below the electroweak phase transition temperature $T_\mathrm{EW}\simeq 125\mathrm{\,GeV}$. We show that Higgs is neither in abundance (chemical) nor in momentum…
If our observable Universe is only a tiny region of a vastly larger and conformally older spacetime, then the usual formulations of the classical flatness and horizon problems of the Hot Big Bang can be reinterpreted as artifacts…
Universality and scaling are hallmarks of second-order phase transitions but are generally unexpected in first-order quantum phase transitions (FOQPTs). We present a microscopic theory showing that quantum criticality can emerge around the…
We study the cosmological implications of the minimal non-linear realisation of scale invariance within the Standard Model (SM). This framework provides a technically natural explanation for the hierarchy between the Planck scale and the…
We investigate to what extent future microwave background experiments might be able to detect a suppression of fluctuation power on large scales in flat and open universe models. Such suppression would arise if fluctuations are generated by…
We study the soft mode along the critical line in the phase diagram with the tricritical point, using the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model. At the critical point with finite quark mass, the ordering density becomes a linear combination of the…
Eternal inflation arising from a potential landscape predicts that our universe is one realization of many possible cosmological histories. One way to access different cosmological histories is via the nucleation of bubble universes from a…
The discrepancy between the value of the Hubble constant $H_0$ measured from the local distance ladder and from the cosmic microwave background is the most serious challenge to the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. Various models have been…
We propose a model of inflation driven by the relaxation of an initially Planckian cosmological constant due to diffusion. The model can generate a (approximately) scale invariant spectrum of (adiabatic) primordial perturbations with the…
We have studied a quantum Hamiltonian that models an array of ultrasmall Josephson junctions with short range Josephson couplings, $E_J$, and charging energies, $E_C$, due to the small capacitance of the junctions. We derive a new effective…
We propose a unification of some fine-tuning problems -- really in this article only the problem of why the weak scale is so small in energy compared to a presumed fundamental scale, being say the Planck scale -- by postulating the zero or…
We revisit the constraints on inflation models by using the current cosmological observations involving the latest local measurement of the Hubble constant ($H_{0} = 73.00\pm 1.75$ km s $^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$). We constrain the primordial power…
The end of a thermal inflation era, driven by the rolling of a flaton field coupled to the curvaton, cause a huge increment in the curvaton mass and decay rate while the curvaton is still frozen. It is shown that, if this increment is…
The Hubble tension is shown to be solvable, without any free parameter, conceptually and quantitatively, within the approach of modified weak-field General Relativity involving the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. That approach enables one…
The current experimentally measured parameters of the Standard Model (SM) suggest that our Universe lies in a metastable electroweak vacuum, where the Higgs field is prone to vacuum decay to a lower state with catastrophic consequences. Our…
We discuss the influence of a helicity imbalance on the phase diagram of dense QCD at finite temperature. We argue that the helical chemical potential is a thermodynamically relevant quantity in theories with the mass gap generation. Using…