English

Hubble selection of the weak scale from QCD quantum critical point

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-06-07 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

There is growing evidence that the small weak scale may be related to self-organized criticality. In this regard, we note that if the strange quark were lighter, the QCD phase transition could have been first order, possibly exhibiting quantum critical points at zero temperature as a function of the Higgs vacuum expectation value vhv_h smaller than (but near) the weak scale. We show that these quantum critical points allow a dynamical selection of the observed weak scale, via quantum-dominated stochastic evolutions of the value of vhv_h during eternal inflation. Although the values of vhv_h in different Hubble patches are described by a probability distribution in the multiverse, inflationary quantum dynamics ensures that the peak of the distribution evolves toward critical points (self-organized criticality), driven mainly by the largest Hubble expansion rate there -- the Hubble selection of the universe. To this end, we first explore the quantum critical points of the three-flavor QCD linear sigma model, parametrized by vhv_h at zero temperature, and we present a relaxion model for the weak scale. Among the patches that have reached reheating, it results in a sharp probability distribution of vhv_h near the observed weak scale, which is critical not to the crossover at vh=0v_h=0 but to the sharp transition at ΛQCD{\sim}\Lambda_{\rm QCD}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.02801,
  title  = {Hubble selection of the weak scale from QCD quantum critical point},
  author = {Sunghoon Jung and TaeHun Kim},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.02801},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

v3: matched with the published version; discussions improved

R2 v1 2026-06-24T03:56:35.781Z