The Mirage of the Fermi Scale

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the electroweak scale may not be fundamental but a derived phenomenon resulting from high-energy dynamics, challenging traditional model building in particle physics.

Contribution

It introduces a natural dynamical framework where the Fermi scale emerges from the interplay of two very high energy scales, offering a new perspective on electroweak symmetry breaking.

Findings

The electroweak scale can be a low-energy mirage of high-energy physics.

A simple dynamical model links the Fermi scale to scales around 10^{10} and 10^{16} GeV.

This approach suggests revising traditional paradigms of model building in particle physics.

Abstract

The discovery of a light Higgs boson at LHC may be suggesting that we need to revise our model building paradigms to understand the origin of the weak scale. We explore the possibility that the Fermi scale is not fundamental but rather a derived one, i.e. a low energy mirage. We show that this scenario emerges in a very natural way in models previously used to break the electroweak symmetry dynamically and suggest a simple dynamical framework for this idea. In our model the electroweak scale results from the interplay between two very high energy scales, one typically of the order of $\Luv\sim 10^{10}$ GeV and the other around $M_{\rm U} \sim 10^{16}$ GeV, although other values are also possible.