Related papers: Weak scale: Dynamical determination versus acciden…
Is the weak scale natural? This ever pending question makes the search for new particle production a highly motivated primary goal of the next LHC phase. These searches may or may not be successful. While waiting for a needed higher energy…
In the presence of large extra dimensions, the fundamental Planck scale can be much lower than the apparent four-dimensional Planck scale. In this setup, the weak gravity conjecture implies a much more stringent constraint on the UV cutoff…
One of the puzzles of the Standard Model is why the mass parameter which determines the scale of the Weak interactions is closer to the scale of QCD than to the Grand Unification or Planck scales. We discuss a novel approach to this problem…
The Planck scale is considered to be a natural minimum scale, made up as it is solely of fundamental constants. However the Planck scale is well beyond the scales encountered in real life, these latter being at least of the order of the…
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.…
In the underlying Planck scale theory we introduce a certain type of discrete symmetry, which potentially brings the stability of the weak-scale hierarchy under control. Under the discrete symmetry the $\mu $-problem and the tadpole problem…
Combining the quantum scale invariance with the absence of new degrees of freedom above the electroweak scale leads to stability of the latter against perturbative quantum corrections. Nevertheless, the hierarchy between the weak and the…
In sufficiently complex models with many parameters that are unknown or undetermined from first principles, a small coupling or mass can naturally arise even if it is not protected by a symmetry or a result of some dynamics. For the…
Assuming that naturalness should be modified by ignoring quadratic divergences, we propose a simple extension of the Standard Model where the weak scale is dynamically generated together with an automatically stable vector. Identifying it…
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…
We propose a model of a confining dark sector, dark technicolor, that communicates with the Standard Model through the Higgs portal. In this model electroweak symmetry breaking and dark matter share a common origin, and the electroweak…
Remarkably accurate fine structure constants are calculated from assumptions further developed from two earlier publications. We have put together a series of energy scales related to various physical phenomena such as the Planck scale, a…
The average result of a weak measurement of some observable $A$ can, under post-selection of the measured quantum system, exceed the largest eigenvalue of $A$. The nature of weak measurements, as well as the presence of post-selection and…
In combination with post-selection, weak measurements can lead to surprising results known as anomalous weak values. These lie outside the bounds of the spectrum of the relevant observable, as in the canonical example of measuring the spin…
Plastic deformation of heterogeneous solid structures is often characterized by random intermittent local plastic events. On the mesoscale this feature can be represented by a spatially fluctuating local yield threshold. Here we study the…
Last year I talked at this meeting about a possible time dependence of the QCD coupling constant $\alpha_s$. This year I shall look into the problem once more, without fully repeating the arguments given last year. Astrophysical indications…
In the standard model, the weak scale is the only parameter with mass dimensions. This means that the standard model itself can not explain the origin of the weak scale. On the other hand, from the results of recent accelerator experiments,…
Superstring flux compactifications can stabilize all moduli while leading to an enormous number of vacua solutions, each leading to different $4-d$ laws of physics. While the string landscape provides at present the only plausible…
Natural selection acts on traits at different scales, often with opposing consequences. This article identifies the particular forces that act at each scale and how those forces combine to determine the overall evolutionary outcome. A…
In this note we present a framework in which the weak scale appears dynamically technically natural with no new physics up to the Planck scale. The mixing between the massless Higgs and the R^2 metric theory induces, in canonical…