PIRSA:20100059

The Weak Scale as a Trigger Part I: Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness

D’Agnolo, R. (2020). The Weak Scale as a Trigger Part I: Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/20100059

D’Agnolo, Raffaele. The Weak Scale as a Trigger Part I: Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness. Perimeter Institute, Oct. 20, 2020, https://pirsa.org/20100059 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:20100059,
            doi = {10.48660/20100059},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/20100059},
            author = {D{\textquoteright}Agnolo, Raffaele},
            keywords = {Particle Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {The Weak Scale as a Trigger Part I: Crunching Dilaton, Hidden Naturalness},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2020},
            month = {oct},
            note = {PIRSA:20100059 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Raffaele D’Agnolo

Institute for Advanced Study (IAS)

Talk number
PIRSA:20100059
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract

I discuss a new approach to the Higgs naturalness problem, where the value of the Higgs mass is tied to cosmic stability and the possibility of a large observable Universe. The Higgs mixes with the dilaton of a CFT sector whose true ground state has a large negative vacuum energy. If the Higgs VEV is non-zero and below O(TeV), the CFT also admits a second metastable vacuum, where the expansion history of the Universe is conventional. As a result, only Hubble patches with unnaturally small values of the Higgs mass support inflation and post-inflationary expansion, while all other patches rapidly crunch. I will also comment on alternative realizations of the mechanism that do not require a CFT sector and have a simple perturbative description.