We explore a minimal scenario where the sole Standard-Model Higgs is responsible for reheating the Universe after inflation, produces a significant background of gravitational waves and maintains the full classical stability of the electroweak vacuum. As the Higgs self-coupling runs toward negative values at high energy scales, a non-minimal interaction with curvature during a stiff background expansion era drives the Higgs fluctuations closer to the instability scale. This curvature-induced tachyonic instability leads to an intense production of Higgs particles, accompanied by a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The characteristic features of such signal can be directly correlated to the inflationary scale, the non-minimal coupling parameter and the top quark Yukawa coupling. We distinguish between three possible scenarios: absolute stability with low top quark masses, potential vacuum instability, and absolute stability with new physics above the instability scale. Our findings suggest that the detection of a peaked background of gravitational waves together with its inflationary tail has the potential to unveil the features of the Higgs effective potential at very high energy scales while providing a minimal explanation for the reheating phase and the emergence of the Standard-Model plasma in the early Universe. Unlike other studies in the literature, the generation of gravitational waves in our scenario does not depend on the quantum instability of the Standard Model vacuum.
During inflation in the early universe, the Higgs field continuously acquires long-wave quantum fluctuations. They accumulate to yield a non-vanishing value with an exponentially large correlation length. We study consequences of such Higgs condensations to show that, in inflation models where the universe is reheated through gravitational particle production at the transition to the kination regime, they not only contribute to reheat the universe but also act as a curvaton. Unfortunately, however, for parameters of the Standard Model Higgs field, this curvaton produces density fluctuations to…
It is shown that a positive non-minimal coupling of the Higgs field to gravity can solve the two problems in inflation models in which postinflationary universe is dominated by an energy with stiff equation of state such as a kination, namely, overproduction of gravitons in gravitational reheating scenario, and overproduction of curvature perturbation from Higgs condensation. Furthermore, we argue that the non-minimal coupling parameter can be constrained more stringently with the progress in observations of large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background.
We present a model for viable gravitational reheating involving a scalar field directly coupled to the Ricci curvature scalar. Crucial to the model is a period of kination after inflation, which causes the Ricci scalar to change sign thus inducing a tachyonic effective mass $m^{2} \propto -H^2$ for the scalar field. The resulting tachyonic growth of the scalar field provides the energy for reheating, allowing for temperatures high enough for thermal leptogenesis. Additionally, the required period of kination necessarily leads to a blue-tilted primordial gravitational wave spectrum with the pot…
We consider scenarios where the inflaton field decays dominantly to a hidden dark matter (DM) sector. By studying the typical behavior of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs field during inflation, we derive a relation between the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and amplitude of the residual DM isocurvature perturbations $β$ which is typically generated if the DM is thermally decoupled from the SM sector. We consider different expansion histories and find that if the Universe was radiation- or matter-dominated after inflation, a future discovery of primordial DM isocurvature will rule out all …
We propose a non-oscillatory no-scale supergravity model of inflation (NO-NO inflation) in which the inflaton does not oscillate at the end of the inflationary era. Instead, the Universe is then dominated by the inflaton kinetic energy density (kination). During the transition from inflation to kination, the Universe preheats instantly through a coupling to Higgs-like fields. These rapidly annihilate and scatter into ultra-relativistic matter particles, which subsequently dominate the energy density, and reheating occurs at a temperature far above that of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. After the el…
Recently, a new mechanism to generate a naturally small electroweak scale has been proposed. It exploits the coupling of the Higgs to an axion-like field and a long era in the early universe where the axion unchains a dynamical screening of the Higgs mass. We present a new realization of this idea with the new feature that it leaves no signs of new physics up to a rather large scale, 10^9 GeV, except for two very light and weakly coupled axion-like states. One of the scalars can be a viable Dark Matter candidate. Such a cosmological Higgs-axion interplay could be tested with a number of experi…
We calculate the dominant contributions of third generation four-quark operators to single-Higgs production and decay. They enter via loop corrections to Higgs decays into gluons, photons and $b\bar{b}$, and in Higgs production via gluon fusion and in association with top quark pairs. We show that these loop effects can, in some cases, lead to better constraints than those from fits to top quark data. Finally, we investigate whether these four-fermion operators can spoil the determination of the trilinear Higgs self-coupling from fits to single-Higgs data.
We discuss some aspects of the interplay between the top quark and the Higgs boson at the LHC. First we describe what indirect information on the top Yukawa coupling can be extracted from measurements in the Higgs sector. We then show that the study of processes involving $Ht\bar{t}$ and $Hb\bar{b}$ final states can give us information on the spectrum in models of strong electroweak symmetry breaking. In particular, we introduce a novel analysis of the $Hb\bar{b}\to bb\bar{b}\bar{b}$ channel with an excellent discovery potential at the LHC.
我们表明，标量非粒子耦合到标准模型希格斯在重整化水平可以有一个戏剧性的影响，在打破的电弱对称性已经在树的水平。特别是人们可以得到适当的电弱标度，而不需要在拉格朗日中的希格斯质量项。通过研究混合的非粒子-希格斯传播子和谱函数，我们还展示了非粒子如何使希格斯质量偏离其标准模型值λ v ^2，并影响其他希格斯玻色子的性质。相反，我们详细研究了电弱对称破缺如何通过破坏其共形对称性和产生质量间隙来影响非粒子扇区。我们还表明，对于希格斯质量以上的差距，非粒子可以增加相当显着的希格斯宽度。
We review the dynamics of spectator scalar fields non-minimally coupled to gravity in the post-inflationary Universe, with particular emphasis on scenarios where the end of inflation is followed by a period of kination. In this context, the evolution of the Ricci scalar can lead to the spontaneous breaking of discrete or continuous symmetries through tachyonic instabilities. These Hubble-induced phase transitions may cause the amplification of field fluctuations, the formation of transient topological defects, and an efficient energy transfer into relativistic degrees of freedom. We analyze th…
We discuss the Higgs mass and cosmological constant hierarchy puzzles with emphasis on the interplay of Poincare invariance, mass generation and renormalization group invariance. A plausible explanation involves an emergent Standard Model with the cosmological constant scale suppressed by power of the large scale of emergence. In this scenario the cosmological constant scale and neutrino masses should be of similar size.
During or towards the end of inflation, the Standard Model (SM) Higgs forms a condensate with a large amplitude. Following inflation, the condensate oscillates, decaying non-perturbatively into the rest of the SM species. The resulting out-of-equilibrium dynamics converts a fraction of the energy available into gravitational waves (GW). We study this process using classical lattice simulations in an expanding box, following the energetically dominant electroweak gauge bosons $W^\pm$ and $Z$. We characterize the GW spectrum as a function of the running couplings, Higgs initial amplitude, and po…
We present updated global fits of the Standard Model and beyond to electroweak precision data, taking into account recent progress in theoretical calculations and experimental measurements. From the fits, we derive model-independent constraints on new physics by introducing oblique and epsilon parameters, and modified $Zb\bar{b}$ and $HVV$ couplings. Furthermore, we also perform fits of the scale factors of the Higgs-boson couplings to observed signal strengths of the Higgs boson.
We explore the implications of the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) with dimension-six terms involving the Higgs boson and third-generation fermion fields on the rate of Higgs boson production and decay into fermions, on the electric dipole moments (EDMs) of the electron, and on the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We study the consequences of allowing these additional terms for each flavor separately and for combinations of two flavors. We find that a complex $τ$ Yukawa coupling can account for the observed baryon asymmetry $Y_B^{\rm obs}$ within current LHC and EDM bounds. A co…
We study the Dine-Fischler-Srednicki (DFS) model in the light of the recent Higgs LHC results and electroweak precision data. The DFS model is a natural extension of the two-Higgs doublet model endowed with a Peccei-Quinn symmetry and leading to a physically acceptable axion. For generic couplings, the model reproduces the minimal Standard Model showing only tiny deviations (extreme decoupling scenario) whereas all additional degrees of freedom (with the exception of the axion) are very heavy. Recently, new corners of this model have been highlighted where it may exhibit enlarged global symmet…
In some extensions of the standard model with extended Higgs sectors, events from new particle production may pass the selection criteria for Higgs search in different channels at the LHC - 14 TeV and mimic Higgs signals. This intriguing possibility is illustrated by PYTHIA based simulations using several representative points in the parameter space of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) including a point in the minimal supergravity model consistent with the Dark matter (DM) relic density data. Our simulations explore the interplay between the charged Higgs signal and typical squa…
Guided us by the scenario of weak scale naturalness and the possible existence of exotic resonances, we have explored in a $SO(5)$ Composite Higgs set-up the interplay among three matter sectors: elementary, top partners and vector resonances. We parametrise it through explicit interactions of spin-1 $SO(4)$-resonances, coupled to the $SO(5)$-invariant fermionic currents and tensors presented in this work. Such invariants are built upon the Standard Model fermion sector as well as top partners sourced by the unbroken $SO(4)$. The mass scales entailed by the top partner and vector resonance sec…
We study UV complete theories where the Standard Model (SM) gauge group is extended with a new abelian $U(1)$, and the field content is augmented by an arbitrary number of scalar and fermion SM singlets, potentially including dark matter (DM) candidates. Considerations such as classical and quantum gauge invariance of the full theory and S-matrix unitarity, not applicable within a simplified model approach, are shown to have significant phenomenological consequences. The lack of gauge anomalies leads to compact relations among the $U(1)$ fermion charges, and puts a lower bound on the number of…
After the discovery of a 126 GeV state at the LHC it is imperative to establish whether this particle really is the Higgs boson of the standard model. The early measurements have not yet pinpointed any of the Higgs couplings to fermions, the Yukawa couplings of the standard model. In this paper we study the values of the top-quark-Higgs coupling, $g_{ht\bar{t}}$, that are still allowed by the one-loop couplings of the Higgs to two gluons or two photons. We first assume that both the gluon fusion production of the Higgs and its decay into two photons proceed through loops with standard model pa…
Apparent metastability of the electroweak vacuum poses a number of cosmological questions. These concern evolution of the Higgs field to the current vacuum, and its stability during and after inflation. Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity interactions can make a crucial impact on these considerations potentially solving the problems. In this work, we allow for these couplings to be present simultaneously and study their interplay. We find that different combinations of the Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal Higgs-gravity couplings induce effective Higgs mass during and after inflation. Th…
The properties of the recently discovered Higgs boson together with the absence of new physics at collider experiments allows us to speculate about consistently extending the Standard Model of particle physics all the way up to the Planck scale. In this context, the Standard Model Higgs non-minimally coupled to gravity could be responsible for the symmetry properties of the Universe at large scales and for the generation of the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations seeding structure formation. We overview the minimalistic Higgs inflation scenario, its predictions, open issues and exte…
Using 3+1 classical lattice simulations, we follow the symmetry breaking pattern and subsequent non-linear evolution of a spectator field non-minimally coupled to gravity when the post-inflationary dynamics is given in terms of a stiff equation-of-state parameter. We find that the gradient energy density immediately after the transition represents a non-negligible fraction of the total energy budget, steadily growing to equal the kinetic counterpart. This behaviour is reflected on the evolution of the associated equation-of-state parameter, which approaches a universal value $1/3$, independent…
We study the effects from light sfermions on the lightest Higgs boson production and decay at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) within the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We find that the scenario with light coloured sfermions -- stops or sbottoms -- has the potential to explain a non-universal alteration, as hinted by LHC data, of the gluon-gluon Fusion ($μ_{ggF}$) with respect to the Vector Boson Fusion ($μ_{VBF}$) event rates and, in particular, can predict $\frac{μ_{VBF}}{μ_{ggF}}>1$ for all Higgs boson decay channels in large areas of the parameter space. We also find that the…
Natural SUSY scenarios with a low value of the $μ$ parameter, are characterised by a higgsino-like dark matter candidate, and a compressed spectrum for the lightest higgsinos. We explore the prospects for probing this scenario at the 13 TeV stage of the LHC via monojet searches, with various integrated luminosity options, and demonstrate how these results are affect by different assumptions on the achievable level of control on the experimental systematic uncertainties. The complementarity between collider and direct detection experiments (present and future) is also highlighted.
We briefly review recent progress in the analysis of the Higgs sector of the Minimal R-symmetric Supersymmetric Standard Model. Importance of the interplay between W and Higgs boson masses in constraining the parameter space of the model is shown.
We propose a gauged two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) featuring an anomalous Peccei-Quinn symmetry, $U(1)_{PQ}$. Dangerous tree-level flavour-changing neutral currents, common in 2HDMs, are forbidden by the extra gauge symmetry, $U(1)_X$. In our construction, the solutions to the important issues of neutrino masses, dark matter and the strong CP problem are interrelated. Neutrino masses are generated via a Dirac seesaw mechanism and are suppressed by the ratio of the $U(1)_X$ and the $U(1)_{PQ}$ breaking scales. Naturally small neutrino masses suggest that the breaking of $U(1)_X$ occurs at a rel…
The top-Higgs system, consisting of top quark (LH doublet, RH singlet) and Higgs boson kinetic terms, with gauge fields set to zero, has an exact (modulo total divergences) symmetry where both fermion and Higgs fields are shifted and mixed in a supersymmetric fashion. The full Higgs-Yukawa interaction and Higgs-potential, including additional \sim 1/Λ^2 NJL-like interactions, also has this symmetry to O(1/Λ^4), up to null-operators. Thus the interaction lagrangian can be viewed as a power series in 1/Λ^2. The symmetry involves interplay of the Higgs quartic interaction with the Higgs-Yukawa in…
We determine the contribution to the $S$ and $T$ parameters coming from extensions of the standard model featuring a light nonstandard-like Higgs particle. We neatly separate, using the Landau gauge, the contribution from the purely nonstandard Higgs sector, from the one due to the interplay of this sector with the standard model. If the nonstandard Higgs sector derives from a new type of near conformal dynamics, the formalism allows to precisely link the intrinsic underlying contribution with the experimentally relevant parameters.
We consider QCD corrections to two loops for the polarized amplitudes of $q{\bar q}\to Z +$ Higgs boson. First we show how the polarized amplitudes of $b \bar{b} \rightarrow Z h$ associated with a non-vanishing $b$-quark Yukawa coupling and a scalar or pseudoscalar Higgs boson $h$ can be built up solely from vector form factors (FF) of properly grouped classes of diagrams, bypassing completely the need of explicitly manipulating $γ_5$ in dimensional regularization (up to a few "anomalous", i.e., triangle diagrams). We determine the contributions of the triangle diagrams in the heavy top limit.…
The top-Higgs system, consisting of top quark (LH doublet, RH singlet), and Higgs boson kinetic terms, with gauge fields set to zero, has an exact (modulo total divergences) symmetry where both fermion and Higgs fields are shifted and mixed in a supersymmetric fashion. The full Higgs-Yukawa interaction and Higgs-potential, including additional 1/Λ^2 N JL-like interactions, also has this symmetry to 0(1/Λ^4) up to null-operators. Thus the interaction lagrangian can be viewed as a power series in 1/Λ^2. The symmetry involves interplay of the Higgs quartic interaction with the Higgs-Yukawa intera…
We discuss the potential impacts on the CMSSM of future LHC runs and possible electron-positron and higher-energy proton-proton colliders, considering searches for supersymmetry via MET events, precision electroweak physics, Higgs measurements and dark matter searches. We validate and present estimates of the physics reach for exclusion or discovery of supersymmetry via MET searches at the LHC, which should cover the low-mass regions of the CMSSM parameter space favoured in a recent global analysis. As we illustrate with a low-mass benchmark point, a discovery would make possible accurate LHC …
Macroscopic quantum vacuum and modern theories of gravitation share the strong interplay between geometry and physical phenomena. We review selected issues related to the accuracy of the measurement of Casimir forces with particular emphasis on the implications for the search of non-Newtonian gravitational forces in the micrometer range. We then discuss the interplay of the Higgs particle with gravitation, arguing that spectroscopic shifts in atomic transitions due to the modifications of the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field in regions with strong curvature of space-time may be of c…
We examine the interplay between Higgs mediation of dark matter annihilation and scattering on one hand, and the invisible Higgs decay width on the other, in a generic class of models utilizing the Higgs portal. We find that, while the invisible width of the Higgs to dark matter is now constrained for a minimal singlet scalar WIMP by experiments such as XENON100, this conclusion is not robust within more generic examples of Higgs mediation. We present a survey of simple WIMP scenarios with m_{DM} < m_h/2 and Higgs portal mediation, where direct detection signatures are suppressed, while the Hi…
We study the the impact of Run2 LHC data on general Composite Higgs scenarios, where non-linear effects, mixing with additional scalars and new fermionic degrees of freedom could simultaneously contribute to the modification of Higgs properties. We obtain new experimental limits on the scale of compositeness, the mixing with singlets and doublets with the Higgs, and the mass and mixing angle of top-partners. We also show that for scenarios where new fermionic degrees of freedom are involved in electroweak symmetry breaking, there is an interesting interplay among Higgs coupling measurements, b…
This is a brief review of the theoretical status of Higgs production at the LHC in the Standard Model, with an emphasis on the recent developments and computations. In particular, I focus on both inclusive and differential cross sections for the dominant production mode in the Standard Model, where the theoretical uncertainties induced by the different interplays between top- and bottom-quark effects in the gluon-fusion scattering amplitude are discussed.
We have explored Natural Supersymmetry (NSUSY) scenarios with low values of the $μ$ parameter which are characterised by higgsino-like Dark Matter (DM) and compressed spectra for the lightest MSSM particles, $χ^0_1$, $χ^0_2$ and $χ^\pm_1$. This scenario could be probed via monojet signatures, but as the signal-to-background ratio (S/B) is low we demonstrate that the 8 TeV LHC cannot obtain limits on the DM mass beyond those of LEP2. On the other hand, we have found, for the 13 TeV run of the LHC, that by optimising kinematical cuts we can bring the S/B ratio up to the 5(3)% level which would a…
The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) provides a powerful theoretical framework for searching for subtle deviations from the Standard Model. In this talk, we present the results from a global fit of the dimension-6 operators of the SMEFT to a combination of Higgs, top, diboson and electroweak precision observables. SMEFT constraints driven by data from the top quark sector are highlighted. We explore the interplay between the top and Higgs sectors, emphasising the need for a global approach to constraining the SMEFT.
We explore CP violating aspects in the Higgs sector of models where new vectorlike quarks carry Yukawa couplings mainly to the third generation quarks of the Standard Model. We point out that in the simplest model, Higgs CP violating interactions only exist in the hWW channel. At low energy, we find that rare B decays can place similarly strong constraints as those from electric dipole moments on the source of CP violation. These observations offer a new handle to discriminate from other Higgs CP violating scenarios such as scalar sector extensions of the Standard Model, and imply an interesti…
Interplay between Hbs and bsgamma in the MSSM with Non-Minimal Flavour Violation
我们研究了非最小味破坏（NMFV）的MSSM味混合参数对味变化中性重Higgs玻色子衰变H-> b \bar s的约束.在我们的分析中，我们包括SM和新物理的贡献，由于一般的味道混合的squark质量矩阵。我们研究的情况下，一个和两个非零的味道混合参数，并发现在后一种情况下的干扰可以提高希格斯的味道变化的分支比由一个或两个数量级相对于以前的预测基于一个单一的非零参数，并与目前的限制从$B$物理协议。在我们的工作过程中，我们为NMFV MSSM开发了一个新的“FeynArts”模型文件，并为“FormCalc”添加了评估所需的代码。这两个扩展都是公开的。
