State-of-the-Art Calculation of the Decay Rate of Electroweak Vacuum in Standard Model

TL;DR

This paper provides a precise, gauge-invariant calculation of the electroweak vacuum decay rate within the Standard Model, revealing an extremely low decay probability over cosmological timescales.

Contribution

It introduces a gauge-invariant formula for the decay rate and performs detailed numerical analysis using current SM parameters.

Findings

Decay rate is approximately 10^{-577} Gyr^{-1} Gpc^{-3} with best-fit parameters.

Uncertainty in top quark mass leads to a decay rate range of 10^{-295} to 10^{-1465} Gyr^{-1} Gpc^{-3}.

Electroweak vacuum is metastable with an extremely long lifetime.

Abstract

The decay rate of the electroweak (EW) vacuum is calculated in the framework of the standard model (SM) of particle physics, using the recent progresses in the understanding of the decay rate of metastable vacuum in gauge theories. We give a manifestly gauge-invariant expression of the decay rate. We also perform a detailed numerical calculation of the decay rate. With the best-fit values of the SM parameters, we find that the decay rate of the EW vacuum per unit volume is about $10^{-577}\ {\rm Gyr^{-1}Gpc^{-3}}$; with the uncertainty in the top mass, the decay rate is estimated as $10^{-295}-10^{-1465}\ {\rm Gyr^{-1}Gpc^{-3}}$.