Related papers: On the Stability of Electroweak Strings (New Versi…
The Higgs boson discovery at the LHC with a mass of approximately 126 GeV suggests, that the electroweak vacuum of the standard model may be metastable at very high energies. However, any new physics beyond the standard model can change…
If the Higgs boson weighs about 115 GeV, the effective potential of the Standard Model becomes unstable above a scale of about 10^6 GeV. This instability may be rectified only by new bosonic particles such as stop squarks. However, avoiding…
We review the constraints on Higgs boson properties from effective potential methods. In the Standard Model, the requirement of stability (or metastability) of the standard electroweak minimum puts an upper bound on the scale of new physics…
We extend the 5D gauge-higgs scenario to the soft-wall framework where the IR brane is replaced by a smoothly decaying warp factor. The electroweak symmetry of the Standard Model is embedded in a larger symmetry group whose gauge bosons…
We show that the electroweak $Z-$string can be stabilized by the presence of bound states of a complex scalar field. We argue that fermions coupled to the scalar field of the string can also make the string stable and discuss the physical…
We examine the possibility of necessary and inevitable radiative electroweak symmetry breaking by one-loop radiative corrections in a class of string models which are the string realization of "brane world" scenario. As an example, we…
We review a class of non-topological defects in the standard electroweak model, and their implications. Starting with the semilocal string, which provides a counterexample to many well known properties of topological vortices, we discuss…
Electroweak precision data have been extensively used to constrain models containing physics beyond that of the Standard Model. When the model contains Higgs scalars in representations other than singlets or doublets, and hence rho not…
In this talk we review the actual situation concerning electroweak phase transition and baryogenesis in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model. A strong enough phase transition requires light Higgs and stop eigenstates.…
We carry out lattice simulations of a cosmological electroweak phase transition for a Higgs mass m_h ~ 126 GeV. The analysis is based on a dimensionally reduced effective theory for an MSSM-like scenario including a relatively light…
We discuss the possibility of breaking the electroweak symmetry in theories with extra dimensions via boundary conditions, without a physical Higgs scalar in the spectrum. In these models the unitarity violation scale can be delayed via the…
A global analysis is performed using the latest data from LEP and SLC. Constraints on the electroweak universal parameters ($S,T,U$) and on the masses of the top quark and Higgs boson within the Standard Model (SM) are investigated. The…
We consider the possibility that the gauge hierarchy is a byproduct of the metastability of the electroweak vacuum, i.e., that whatever mechanism is responsible for the latter also sets the running Higgs mass to a value smaller than its…
We study different types of Two Higgs Doublet Models (2HDMs) under the assumption that all quartic couplings' beta functions vanish simultaneously at the Planck scale. The Standard Model seems to display this property almost accidentally,…
We present a class of four-dimensional models, with a non-supersymmetric spectrum, in which the radiative corrections to the Higgs mass are not sensitive, at least at one-loop, to the UV completion of the theory. At one loop, Yukawa…
Using a physical renormalisation scheme we derive mass-dependent renormalisation group equations for the running of the Higgs quartic coupling within the Standard Model. Subsequently, we accurately take into account weak scale thresholds,…
Precision electroweak data are generally believed to constrain the Higgs boson mass to lie below approximately 190 GeV at 95% confidence level. The standard Higgs model is, however, trivial and can only be an effective field theory valid…
The current status of the quantities entering into the global electroweak fits is reviewed, highlighting changes since Summer 2003. These data include the precision electroweak properties of the Z and W bosons, the top-quark mass and the…
Classical solutions describing strings endowed with an electric charge and carrying a constant electromagnetic current are constructed within the bosonic sector of the Electroweak Theory. For any given ratio of the Higgs boson mass to W…
We present results obtained from a numerical investigation of the electroweak phase transition in the SU(2)-Higgs model. The simulations are performed at two values of the Higgs boson mass, $M_H\approx 20$ GeV and $M_H\approx 50$ GeV. While…