Study group: Higgs vacuum stability

Facilitator: Fedele Lizzi

 

A timely group, with the conferences just a few days after the awarding of the prize to Englert and Higgs (and let me add a touch of sadness for Robert Brout who left us two years ago).

The presence of a light Higgs imposes boundary condition on the renormalization flow which could result, in the absence of new physics,  in a dangerous instability, with the constant of the quartic term becoming negative.

Can noncommutative geometry and the spectral action say something in this respect? The topic intertwines with some fundamental aspects of the the spectral action, and its role with respect to renormalization.

Here I propose a few topics which can be discussed.

  • The role of the running of the gauge couplings and the unification of their values at single scale for the spectral action.
  • The meaning of the cutoff Λ, technical device to regularize or physical phase transition?
  • Stability of the Higgs, the extra field σ and its role in the spectral action.
  • Possibility to go beyond the one loop approximation.

The file below contains some details, a bibliography and some personal considerations. Further contributions before, during and after the workshop are welcome!

stabilityHiggs