Related papers: Decay of high-density matter in the electroweak th…
Topological objects resulting from symmetry breakdown may be either stable or metastable depending on the pattern of symmetry breaking. However, if they acquire zero-energy modes of fermions, and in the process acquire non-integer fermionic…
We study the decay of the metastable symmetric phase in the standard model at finite temperature. For the SU(2)-Higgs model the two wave function correction terms $Z_{\vp}(\vp^2,T)$ and $Z_{\chi}(\vp^2,T)$ of Higgs and Goldstone boson…
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…
Extensions of the Standard Model often come with additional, possibly electroweakly charged Higgs states, the prototypal example being the Two-Higgs-Doublet Model. While collider phenomenology does not exclude the possibility for some of…
A cosmological pseudoscalar field coupled to hypercharge topological number density can exponentially amplify hyperelectric and hypermagnetic fields while coherently rolling or oscillating, leading to the formation of a time-dependent…
We discuss a simple theory predicting the existence of a Dirac dark matter candidate from gauge anomaly cancellation. In this theory, the spontaneous breaking of local baryon number at the low scale can be understood. We show that the…
We study the baryon asymmetry of the universe in the supersymmetric standard model (SSM). At the electroweak phase transition, the fermionic partners of the charged SU(2) gauge bosons and Higgs bosons are reflected from or transmitted to…
Many popular attempts to explain the observed patterns of fermion masses involve a flavon field. Such weakly coupled scalar fields tend to dominate the energy density of the universe before they decay. If the flavon decay happens close to…
We systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries. Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay processes. The decay rate…
Recent progress in the theory of the electroweak phase transition is discussed. For the Higgs boson mass smaller than the masses of W and Z bosons, the phase transition is of the first order. However, its strength is approximately 2/3 times…
The Principle of Naturalness of small parameters of a theory is reviewed. While quantum field theories constructed from gauge fields and fermions only are natural, those containing elementary scalar fields are not. In particular the Higgs…
Theoretical arguments suggest that the Higgs sector of the standard model is an effective theory. We parametrize the new physics by means of an effective Lagrangian technique and study its effect on the energy of the electroweak sphaleron.…
We explore the effects of a heavy fermion doublet in a simplified version of the standard electroweak theory. We integrate out the doublet and compute the exact effective energy functional of spatially varying gauge and Higgs fields. We…
The phenomenology of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector is expected to involve resonances decaying preferentially into heavy fermions. Three recent CDF analyses are reviewed and used to constrain Higgs and Technicolor models.
The recent announcement of a discovery of a possible Higgs-like particle -its spin and parity is yet to be determined- at the LHC with a mass of 126 GeV necessitates a fresh look at the nature of the electroweak symmetry breaking, in…
Topological objects resulting from symmetry breakdown may be either stable or metastable depending on the pattern of symmetry breaking. However, if they trap zero-energy modes of fermions, and in the process acquire non-integer fermionic…
We present a study of the decay of metastable states of a scalar field via thermal activation, in the presence of a finite density of fermions. The process we consider is the nucleation of ``{\it droplets}'' of true vacuum inside the false…
Whether the Standard Model electroweak vacuum is stable, metastable or unstable depends crucially on the top mass (and, to a lesser extent, on other measurable quantities). These topics are reviewed and updated by taking into account the…
A dynamical symmetry breaking model of electroweak interactions is investigated based on strongly interacting fermions. Vector-like fermions of different representations of the weak SU(2) form a symmetry breaking condensate and generate the…
We propose a supersymmetric technicolor model in which the electroweak symmetry breaking is communicated to the quarks and leptons by technicolored $SU(2)_W$-singlet scalars. When the technifermions condense, the quarks and leptons of the…