On the gauge dependence of the Standard Model vacuum instability scale

Abstract

After reviewing the calculation of the Standard Model one-loop effective potential in a class of linear gauges, we discuss the physical observables entering the vacuum stability analysis. While the electroweak-vacuum-stability bound on the Higgs boson mass can be formally proven to be gauge independent, the field value at which the effective potential turns negative (the so-called instability scale) is a gauge dependent quantity. By varying the gauge-fixing scheme and the gauge-fixing parameters in their perturbative domain, we find an irreducible theoretical uncertainty of at least two orders of magnitude on the scale at which the Standard Model vacuum becomes unstable.

24 pages, 4 figures. One reference added. To appear in JHEP

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• Cosmological implications of the Higgs mass measurement
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• The Probable Fate of the Standard Model
• Electroweak Vacuum Stability in light of BICEP2
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