The fate of the Higgs vacuum

Abstract

Abstract:We have recently suggested that tiny black holes can act as nucleation seeds for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. Previous results applied only to the nucleation of thin-wall bubbles, and covered a very small region of parameter space. This paper considers bubbles of arbitrary profile and reaches the same conclusion: black holes seed rapid vacuum decay. Seeded and unseeded nucleation rates are compared, and the gravitational back reaction of the bubbles is taken into account. The evolution of the bubble interior is described for the unseeded nucleation. Results are presented for the renormalisation group improved Standard Model Higgs potential, and a simple effective model representing new physics.

The fate of the Higgs Vacuum

“…Such black holes have some higher-dimensional features, notably a different entropic relation, and a preliminary analysis [4] suggests they may be less problematic, though we are exploring this in more detail.…”

“…This requires a full numerical analysis of the instantons for a range of parameter space relevant to the standard model (SM), and we now review [2,4], first discussing our modelling of the running of the coupling, then the bubble solutions. The high energy effective potential for the Higgs field within the standard model has been determined by a two-loop calculation [7], and is conventionally written in terms of an effective coupling, as V (φ ) = tainty, and for given m t , m H can be computed by direct numerical integration of the β −functions [7].…”

“…and integrating the scalar and metric equations numerically (see [4] for full details). Given that the instanton is static, the action is given by the difference in area between the seed and remnant black holes.…”

“…How dependent are the results of Coleman et al on the assumptions of homogeneity and isotropy? Here, we briefly review our work [1,2,3,4] exploring this issue by introducing a simple gravitational impurity, a black hole, and showing how even a single tiny black hole can overturn our picture of how stable our universe is.…”

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This talk reviews our recent work showing how tiny black holes can act as nucleation sites for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum [1,2,3,4]. We start by discussing the formation of thin wall bubbles of true vacuum inside a false vacuum, and show how adding a black hole lowers the action of the Euclidean tunneling solution, thus strongly enhancing the probability of vacuum decay.

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