Quantum electroweak symmetry breaking through loop quadratic contributions

• Main Authors: Dong Bai, Jian-Wei Cui, Yue-Liang Wu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2015-06-01
• Series: Physics Letters B
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269315003743

Based on two postulations that (i) the Higgs boson has a large bare mass mH≫mh≃125 GeV at the characteristic energy scale Mc which defines the Standard Model (SM) in the ultraviolet region, and (ii) quadratic contributions of Feynman loop diagrams in quantum field theories are physically meaningful, we show that the SM electroweak symmetry breaking is induced by the quadratic contributions from loop effects. As the quadratic running of Higgs mass parameter leads to an additive renormalization, which distinguishes from the logarithmic running with a multiplicative renormalization, the symmetry breaking occurs once the sliding energy scale μ moves from Mc down to a transition scale μ=ΛEW at which the additive renormalized Higgs mass parameter mH2(Mc/μ) gets to change the sign. With the input of current experimental data, this symmetry breaking energy scale is found to be ΛEW≃760 GeV, which provides another basic energy scale for the SM besides Mc. Studying such a symmetry breaking mechanism could play an important role in understanding both the hierarchy problem and naturalness problem. It also provides a possible way to explore the experimental implications of the quadratic contributions as ΛEW lies within the probing reach of the LHC and the future Great Collider. Keywords: Quadratic contribution, Loop regularization, Electroweak symmetry breaking