Related papers: Supersymmetric Higgs and Radiative Electroweak bre…
I review the status of the ElectroWeak Symmetry Breaking problem. The lectures are naturally divided into two parts. The first is mostly devoted to overview the impact of current data on the issue of EWSB. The tools are known, the latest…
We study the little hierarchy between mass parameters in the Higgs sector and other SUSY breaking masses. This type of spectrum can relieve the fine-tuning problem in the MSSM Higgs sector. Our scenario can be realized by superconformal…
We construct supersymmetric theories in which the correct scale for electroweak symmetry breaking is obtained without significant fine-tuning. We calculate the fine-tuning parameter for these theories to be at the 20% level, which is…
In supersymmetric theories with a strong conformal sector, soft supersymmetry breaking at the TeV scale naturally gives rise to confinement and chiral symmetry breaking at the same scale. We investigate models where such a sector…
We analyze some features of the role that extra dimensions, of radius $R$ in the TeV$^{-1}$ range, can play in the soft breaking of supersymmetry and the spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry. We use a minimal model where the gauge…
The structure of the MSSM is reviewed. We first motivate the particle content of the theory by examining the quantum numbers of the known standard model particles and by the requirement of anomaly cancellation. Once the particle content is…
Indirect information about the possible scale of supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking can be obtained from the comparison of precisely measured observables (and also of exclusion limits) with accurate theory predictions incorporating SUSY loop…
We examine the fine-tuning associated to electroweak breaking in Little Higgs scenarios and find it to be always substantial and, generically, much higher than suggested by the rough estimates usually made. This is due to implicit tunings…
The electroweak symmetry is nonlinearly realized in an extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) through an additional pair of constrained Higgs doublet superfields. The superpotential couplings of this constrained Higgs…
An introduction to the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking is given. We discuss Higgs boson production in $e^+e^-$ and hadronic collisions and survey search techniques at present and future accelerators. Indirect limits on the Higgs…
In supersymmetric models where the superpotential mu term is generated with mu<< m_{soft} (e.g. from radiative Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking or compactified string models with sequestration and stabilized moduli), and where the string…
While the LHC takes on the challenge of experimentally exploring the electroweak symmetry breaking sector, it is not only interesting but also crucial to explore alternatives to the Standard Model scenario with an elementary scalar Higgs…
We propose a novel mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetric models, as the one recently discussed by Birkedal, Chacko and Gaillard, in which the Standard Model Higgs doublet is a pseudo-Goldstone boson of some global…
The recent discovery of the putative 125-GeV Higgs boson has motivated a number of attempts to reconcile its relatively large mass with the predictions of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Some approaches invoked large…
In this note I provide a brief description of models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, including walking technicolor, top-color assisted technicolor, the top-quark seesaw model, and little higgs theories.
Little Higgs models represent an alternative to Supersymmetry as a solution to the Hierarchy Problem. After introducing the main physical ideas of these models, we present the fine-tuning associated to the electroweak breaking in Little…
We study the interplay between the spontaneous breaking of a global symmetry of the Higgs sector and gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking, in the framework of a supersymmetric model with global SU(3) symmetry. In addition to solving the…
We present a through discussion of motivations for and phenomenological issues in supersymmetric models with minimal matter content and non-holomorphic soft-breaking terms. Using the unification of the gauge couplings and assuming SUSY is…
We present a brief review of recent attempts to construct effective theories to describe the breaking of the electroweak symmetry in extensions of the Standard Model with new strongly interacting dynamics around the TeV scale. Particular…
I introduce a new low energy effective description of Cosmological SUSY breaking. It requires the existence of a strongly interacting gauge theory at a scale of order $10^3$ GeV, some of whose fields carry standard model quantum numbers.…