Relaxing the Higgs mass and its vacuum energy by living at the top of the potential

Abstract

We consider an ultra-light scalar coupled to the Higgs in the presence of heavier new physics. In the electroweak broken phase the Higgs gives a tree-level contribution to the light-scalar potential, while new physics contributes at loop level. Thereby, the theory has a cosmologically meta-stable phase where the light scalar is around the top of its potential, and the Higgs is a loop factor lighter than new physics. Such regions with precarious naturalness are anthropically and environmentally selected, as regions with heavier Higgs crunch quickly. We expect observable effects of rolling in the dark-energy equation of state. Furthermore, vacuum energies up to the weak scale can be canceled down to anthropically small values.

arXiv comment14 pages, 3 figures; sec. 4.2 extended compared to published version

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness
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• Sliding Naturalness
• Sliding Naturalness: Cosmological Selection of the Weak Scale
• Higgs Criticality beyond the Standard Model
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• Runaway Relaxion from Finite Density
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• Gauge hierarchy and metastability from Higgs-driven crunching
• The Forward Physics Facility at the High-Luminosity LHC
• Weak Scale Triggers in the SMEFT