Electroweak vacua, collider phenomenology, and possible connection with dark energy

Abstract

Higher dimensional non-renormalizable operators may modify the Standard Model Higgs potential in many interesting ways. Here, we consider the appearance of a second vacuum which may play an important role in cosmology. For the certain range of parameters, the usual second order electroweak phase transition is followed by a first order phase transition that may drive the late time accelerated expansion of the universe. Such a potential contains kink-like solutions which in turn can play a crucial role in reconstructing the global shape of the potential in colliders, as we explicitly demonstrate.

The fate of the Higgs vacuum

“…There is also a question about taking into account the way in which quantum corrections to the potential are affected by the spacetime curvature, although to some extent this question can be side-stepped by looking at black hole monopoles where the charge can be used to reduce the Hawking temperature, as was done in [30]. There are also a variety of interesting other consequences of finite temperature tunnelling, particularly in a cosmological context, see for example [45][46][47].…”

Vacuum metastability with black holes

“…We might expect quantum gravity, or other effects will have to be taken into account. On dimensional grounds, we can write modifications to the potential of the following form [37][38][39][40][41][42],…”

Dark Energy

“…Quintessence may be realized using axions [232], dilatons [233], in QCD [234], in Higgs potential [235], or in unparticle theories [236].…”