The Standard model as a low-energy effective theory: what is triggering the Higgs mechanism?

Abstract

The discovery of the Higgs by ATLAS and CMS at the LHC not only provided the last missing building block of the electroweak Standard Model, the mass of the Higgs has been found to have a very peculiar value about 126 GeV, which is such that vacuum stability is extending up to the Planck scale. This may have much deeper drawback than anticipated so far. The impact on the running of the SM gauge, Yukawa and Higgs couplings up to the Planck scale has been discussed in several articles recently. Here we consider the impact on the running masses and we discuss the role of quadratic divergences within the Standard Model. The change of sign of the coefficient of the quadratically divergent terms showing up at about mu_0 ~ 1.4 x 10^16 GeV may be understood as a first order phase transition restoring the symmetric phase, while its large negative values at lower scales triggers the Higgs mechanism, running parameters evolve in such a way that the symmetry is restored two orders of magnitude before the Planck scale. Thus, the electroweak phase transition takes place at the scale mu_0 and not at the electroweak scale v ~ 250 GeV. The SM Higgs system and its phase transition could play a key role for the inflation of the early universe. Also baryogenesis has to be reconsidered under the aspect that perturbative arguments surprisingly work up to the Planck scale.

27 pages, 9 figures. Replacement 29 pages, 11 figures, added references, corrected typos, added two additional figures with comments, results unchanged. Fig.6 and Fig.7 and Tab. 1 added Eq. (2) corrected, updated Higgs mass adopted, more details on inflation, finite temperature effects and the cosmological constant are given, notation adjusted

References in corpus (6)

• Planck 2013 results. I. Overview of products and scientific results
• Higgs self-coupling beta-function in the Standard Model at three loops
• Snowmass 2013 Top quark working group report
• Determination of the top quark mass circa 2013: methods, subtleties, perspectives
• Stabilizing the electroweak vacuum by higher dimensional operators in a Higgs-Yukawa model
• RGE of the Higgs mass in the context of the SM

Cited by in corpus (37)

• QCD and strongly coupled gauge theories: challenges and perspectives
• Higgs inflation still alive
• Higgs inflation from Standard Model criticality
• Renormalizing the vacuum energy in cosmological spacetime: implications for the cosmological constant problem
• Cosmological Aspects of Higgs Vacuum Metastability
• Running vacuum in quantum field theory in curved spacetime: renormalizing ${\rho }_{vac}$ without $\sim m^4$ terms
• Predictions on mass of Higgs portal scalar dark matter from Higgs inflation and flat potential
• On the Veltman Condition, the Hierarchy Problem and High-Scale Supersymmetry
• Landau pole in the Standard Model with weakly interacting scalar fields
• Theoretical constraints on masses of heavy particles in Left-Right Symmetric Models
• Eternal Higgs inflation and cosmological constant problem
• Evidence of the Big Fix
• Higgs inflation with singlet scalar dark matter and right-handed neutrino in light of BICEP2
• The lowest limits on the doubly charged Higgs boson masses in the minimal left-right symmetric model
• Vanishing Higgs potential at the Planck scale in a singlet extension of the standard model
• The Higgs boson -- its implications and prospects for future discoveries
• Models of LHC Diphoton Excesses Valid up to the Planck scale
• Vacuum energy and the cosmological constant
• Reconciling $(g-2{)}_{\mu }$ and charged lepton flavour violating processes through a doubly charged scalar
• The hierarchy problem of the electroweak Standard Model revisited
• Effective Operator Bases for Beyond Standard Model Scenarios: An EFT compendium for discoveries
• Comments on the Hierarchy Problem in Effective Theories
• Reheating-era leptogenesis
• Vanishing Higgs Potential in Minimal Dark Matter Models
• Emergent gauge symmetries -- making symmetry as well as breaking it
• Cosmological implications of Standard Model criticality and Higgs inflation
• Multiple-point principle realized with strong dynamics
• Multiple-point principle with a scalar singlet extension of the Standard Model
• Vacuum energy with mass generation and Higgs bosons
• The Hierarchy Problem and the Cosmological Constant Problem Revisited -- A new view on the SM of particle physics
• Hierarchy problem, gauge coupling unification at the Planck scale, and vacuum stability
• Emergent Gauge Symmetries and Particle Physics
• Fine-tuning and vacuum stability in Wilsonian effective action
• The hierarchy problem and the vacuum stability in two-scalar dark matter model
• About the EW contribution to the relation between pole and MS-masses of the top-quark in the Standard Model
• The cosmological constant and scale hierarchies with emergent gauge symmetries
• Saddle point inflation in string-inspired theory