Cosmological Aspects of Higgs Vacuum Metastability

The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favored over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies that it is possible, and in fact inevitable, that a vacuum d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in astronomy and space sciences Vol. 5
Main Authors Markkanen, Tommi, Rajantie, Arttu, Stopyra, Stephen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Frontiers Media S.A 18.12.2018
Subjects
cosmological inflation
Higgs boson
quantum field theory
quantum tunneling
vacuum stability
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Summary:The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favored over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies that it is possible, and in fact inevitable, that a vacuum decay takes place with catastrophic consequences for the Universe. The metastability of the Higgs vacuum is especially significant for cosmology, because there are many mechanisms that could have triggered the decay of the electroweak vacuum in the early Universe. We present a comprehensive review of the implications from Higgs vacuum metastability for cosmology along with a pedagogical discussion of the related theoretical topics, including renormalization group improvement, quantum field theory in curved spacetime and vacuum decay in field theory.
ISSN:2296-987X
2296-987X
DOI:10.3389/fspas.2018.00040