The fate of the Higgs vacuum

TL;DR

Tiny black holes can trigger rapid decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum, with this paper extending previous work to arbitrary bubble profiles and including gravitational effects, showing black holes as potent nucleation seeds.

Contribution

This work generalizes previous analyses by considering bubbles of any profile and incorporating gravitational back reaction, confirming black holes as significant catalysts for Higgs vacuum decay.

Findings

Black holes seed rapid Higgs vacuum decay.

Gravitational back reaction influences nucleation rates.

Results apply to Standard Model and new physics scenarios.

Abstract

We have recently suggested that tiny black holes can act as nucleation seeds for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. Previous results applied only to the nucleation of thin-wall bubbles, and covered a very small region of parameter space. This paper considers bubbles of arbitrary profile and reaches the same conclusion: black holes seed rapid vacuum decay. Seeded and unseeded nucleation rates are compared, and the gravitational back reaction of the bubbles is taken into account. The evolution of the bubble interior is described for the unseeded nucleation. Results are presented for the renormalisation group improved Standard Model Higgs potential, and a simple effective model representing new physics.