Cosmological Aspects of Higgs Vacuum Metastability

TL;DR

This paper reviews the implications of the Higgs vacuum metastability for cosmology, discussing theoretical aspects and potential early Universe decay scenarios, highlighting its significance for understanding cosmic evolution.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of Higgs vacuum metastability's impact on cosmology, including theoretical frameworks and decay mechanisms, with pedagogical explanations.

Findings

Metastability is favored over absolute stability based on Standard Model parameters.

Vacuum decay could have catastrophic consequences for the Universe.

Various mechanisms could have triggered early Universe vacuum decay.

Abstract

The current central experimental values of the parameters of the Standard Model give rise to a striking conclusion: metastability of the electroweak vacuum is favoured over absolute stability. A metastable vacuum for the Higgs boson implies that it is possible, and in fact inevitable, that a vacuum decay takes place with catastrophic consequences for the Universe. The metastability of the Higgs vacuum is especially significant for cosmology, because there are many mechanisms that could have triggered the decay of the electroweak vacuum in the early Universe. We present a comprehensive review of the implications from Higgs vacuum metastability for cosmology along with a pedagogical discussion of the related theoretical topics, including renormalization group improvement, quantum field theory in curved spacetime and vacuum decay in field theory.