A Shift Symmetry in the Higgs Sector: Experimental Hints and Stringy Realizations

TL;DR

This paper explores how recent Higgs boson data can be explained by high-scale supersymmetry breaking models with a shift symmetry in the Higgs sector, linking experimental hints to string theory compactifications.

Contribution

It proposes that the Higgs mass hints are consistent with models featuring a shift symmetry in the Kahler potential, naturally arising in certain string theory compactifications.

Findings

Higgs mass range suggests a vanishing quartic coupling at high UV scale.

Shift symmetry in the Kahler potential can explain the Higgs mass.

String compactifications with shift symmetry are compatible with LHC data.

Abstract

We interpret reported hints of a Standard Model Higgs boson at ~ 125 GeV in terms of high-scale supersymmetry breaking with a shift symmetry in the Higgs sector. More specifically, the Higgs mass range suggested by recent LHC data extrapolates, within the (non-supersymmetric) Standard Model, to a vanishing quartic Higgs coupling at a UV scale between 10^6 and 10^18 GeV. Such a small value of lambda can be understood in terms of models with high-scale SUSY breaking if the Kahler potential possesses a shift symmetry, i.e., if it depends on H_u and H_d only in the combination (H_u+\bar{H}_d). This symmetry is known to arise rather naturally in certain heterotic compactifications. We suggest that such a structure of the Higgs Kahler potential is common in a wider class of string constructions, including intersecting D7- and D6-brane models and their extensions to F-theory or M-theory. The latest LHC data may thus be interpreted as hinting to a particular class of compactifications which possess this shift symmetry.