Related papers: Are There Pressure Waves in the Vacuum?
The Higgs vacuum -- with its constant background field -- is not `empty' but is a kind of medium. Any ordinary medium, viewed at sufficiently long length scales, has a hydrodynamic description and can propagate sound waves. The vacuum…
The dynamics of a gravitational wave propagating through a cosmic gauge field are dramatically different than in vacuum. We show that a gravitational wave acquires an effective mass, is birefringent, and its normal modes are a linear…
As an example of the unification of gravitation and particle physics, an exact solution of the five-dimensional field equations is studied which describes waves in the classical Einstein vacuum. While the solution is essentially 5D in…
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC, and especially the determination of its mass around 125 GeV, together with the absence of any trace of new physics make it conceivable that we live in a metastable (but long-lived) electroweak…
The Higgs boson is often compared to a small ripple on a vast, calm ocean. This "ocean" is the universal Higgs vacuum expectation value, about 246 GeV, permeating all space and generating particle masses. Its remarkable uniformity reflects…
An important question of theoretical physics is whether sound is able to propagate in vacuums at all and if this is the case, then it must lead to the reinterpretation of one zero-restmass particle which corresponds to vacuum-sound waves.…
Shock waves are examples of the far-from-equilibrium behaviour of matter; they are ubiquitous in nature, yet the underlying microscopic mechanisms behind their formation are not well understood. Here, we study the dynamics of dispersive…
Gravitational waves which are smooth and contain two asymptotically flat regions are constructed from the homogeneous pp-waves vacuum solution. Motion of free test particles is calculated explicitly and the limit to an impulsive wave is…
In theories of supersymmetry breaking, it is often the case that there is more than one metastable vacuum. First-order phase transitions among such metastable vacua may generate a stochastic background of gravitational waves, the…
We discuss the vacuum energy density term resulting from the spontaneous breakdown of the electroweak gauge symmetry, in the Higgs Mechanism. We alternatively expand the scalar field at one of the degenerate states that lie outside the…
A version of the Standard Model is considered, where the electroweak symmetry breaking is provided by cosmological initial data given for the zeroth Fourier harmonic of the Higgs field $<\phi>$. The initial data symmetry breaking mechanism…
The vacuum is considered as some fluid emergent from the zero-point fluctuations of the quantum fields contributing to the vacuum energy density and pressure. The equation of vacuum state and the speed of vacuum sound-waves are deduced…
Due to the peculiar nature of the underlying medium, density fluctuations in a `Higgs condensate' are predicted to propagate for infinitely long wavelengths with a group velocity $c_s\to \infty $. On the other hand, for any large but finite…
This paper explores various aspects and implications of the initial configuration of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs field at the beginning of our Universe. It is well known that the SM Higgs field features a deeper, more stable minimum at…
In many particle physics models, domain wall can form during the phase transition process after discrete symmetry breaking. We study the scenario within a complex singlet extended Standard Model framework, where a strongly first order phase…
The phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking admits a physical interpretation in terms of the Bose-condensation process of elementary spinless quanta. In a cutoff theory, this leads to a picture of the vacuum as a condensed medium whose…
We consider Higgs-Higgs scattering in a minimal Higgs model with strong coupling which leads to the Higgs as a bound state. The partial wave amplitude is unitarized using general principles of analyticity. We find lambda(m_H)/16pi is…
It is demonstrated that in high temperature collisionless plasmas the propagation of high-frequency electromagnetic waves is naturally subject to a classical Higgs mechanism which in some cases generates a very small though finite mass on…
The long-awaited Higgs particle H around 125 GeV has been observed at the LHC. Interpreting it as the standard model Higgs boson and if there is no new physics between electroweak and Planck scale, we then don't have a stable vacuum. Here,…
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…