Related papers: Exact solutions for Vacuum Decay in Unbounded Pote…
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…
First order phase transitions could play a major role in the early universe, providing important phenomenological consequences, such as the production of gravitational waves and the generation of baryon asymmetry. An important aspect that…
This talk reviews our recent work showing how tiny black holes can act as nucleation sites for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. We start by discussing the formation of thin wall bubbles of true vacuum inside a false vacuum, and…
We develop a new method for estimating the decay probability of the false vacuum via regularized instantons. Namely, we consider the case where the potential is either unbounded from below or the second minimum corresponding to the true…
Both parameters in the Higgs field's potential, its mass and quartic coupling, appear fine-tuned to near-critical values, which gives rise to the hierarchy problem and the metastability of the electroweak vacuum. Whereas such behavior…
Despite the enormous significance of the Higgs potential in the context of the Standard Model of electroweak interactions and in Grand Unified Theories, its ultimate origin is fundamentally unknown and must be introduced by hand in…
We consider the dynamics of bubble growth in the Minimal Standard Model at the electroweak phase transition and determine the shape and the velocity of the phase boundary, or bubble wall. We show that in the semi-classical approximation the…
We derive the decay rate of an unstable phase of a quantum field theory in the presence of an impurity in the thin-wall approximation. This derivation is based on the how the impurity changes the (flat spacetime) geometry relative to case…
In the Standard Model, the Higgs potential develops an instability at high field values when the quartic self-coupling runs negative. Large quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation could drive the Higgs field beyond the potential…
We calculate the velocity and thickness of a bubble wall at the electroweak phase transition in the Minimal Standard Model. We model the wall with semiclassical equations of motion and show that friction arises from the deviation of massive…
Based on the current experimental data, the Standard Model predicts that the current vacuum state of the Universe is metastable, leading to a non-zero rate of vacuum decay through nucleation of bubbles of true vacuum. Our existence implies…
According to classical GR, negative-energy (AdS) bubbles in the multiverse terminate in big crunch singularities. It has been conjectured, however, that the fundamental theory may resolve these singularities and replace them by non-singular…
In the standard procedure for calculating the decay rate of a metastable vacuum the solution of the classical Euclidean equation of motion of the background field is needed. On the other hand radiative corrections have to be taken into…
The interior of a vacuum bubble in de Sitter space may give an open universe with sufficient homogeneity to agree with observations. Here, previous work by Bucher, Goldhaber and Turok is extended to describe a thin bubble wall with nonzero…
Scalar field theory with an asymmetric potential is studied at zero temperature and high-temperature for $\phi^6$ potential. The equations of motion are solved numerically to obtain O(4) spherical symmetric and O(3) cylindrical symmetric…
We investigate the unhindered gravitational collapse of a homogeneous scalar field with nonzero potential, a two-dimensional analog of the Mexican hat-shaped Higgs field potential. The collapsing scalar field is surrounded by an exterior…
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…
The dynamics of the electroweak phase transition in the early universe has profound implications for cosmology and particle physics. We systematically study the steady-state dynamics of bubble walls in scenarios where the transition is…
The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favoured over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies…
The talk is devoted to the problem of stability of the Standard Model vacuum. The effective potential for the Higgs field, which can potentialy exhibit additional, deeper minimum, is considered as a convenient tool for addressing the…