Avoiding Death by Vacuum

TL;DR

This paper derives conditions to prevent metastable vacua in the two-Higgs doublet model and shows current LHC data confirms we are in the true vacuum, ensuring stability of the known particle spectrum.

Contribution

It provides analytical bounds on model parameters to avoid metastable vacua in the 2HDM and demonstrates current experimental data confirms the universe is in the global minimum.

Findings

Analytical bounds on 2HDM parameters to prevent metastability

Current LHC data indicates the universe is in the global minimum

Ensures the stability of the known particle spectrum in the model

Abstract

The two-Higgs doublet model (2HDM) can have two electroweak breaking, CP-conserving, minima. The possibility arises that the minimum which corresponds to the known elementary particle spectrum is metastable, a possibility we call the "panic vacuum". We present analytical bounds on the parameters of the softly broken Peccei-Quinn 2HDM which are necessary and sufficient conditions to avoid this possibility. We also show that, for this particular model, the current LHC data already tell us that we are necessarily in the global minimum of the theory, regardless of any cosmological considerations about the lifetime of the false vacua.