Higgs Potential from Wick Rotation in Conformal BSM

TL;DR

This paper explores how Wick rotation of the conformal factor in conformal scalar-tensor gravity can naturally lead to a negative Higgs mass term, inducing electroweak symmetry breaking via quantum gravitational effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Wick rotation in conformal gravity can produce a negative Higgs potential term, linking quantum gravity to electroweak symmetry breaking.

Findings

Negative Higgs mass term can emerge from conformal Wick rotation.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs after conformal symmetry breaking.

Potential implications for vacuum stability in quantum gravity and the Standard Model.

Abstract

It is well known that in order to make the path integral of general relativity converge, one has to perform the Wick rotation over the conformal factor in addition to the more familiar Wick rotation of the time axis to pass to the space-time with Euclidean signature. In this article, we will apply this technique to a scalar field in the conformally invariant scalar-tensor gravity with a conformally invariant beyond-standard-model (BSM). It is then shown that a potential term in the conformally invariant potential, which corresponds to the Higgs mass term in the Higgs potential of the standard model (SM), can have a negative coefficient. The change of sign of the potential term naturally induces spontaneous symmetry breakdown of the electroweak gauge symmetry after symmetry breaking of conformal symmetry (local scale symmetry) via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism around the Planck scale. The present study might shed light on the fact that the existence of a stable vacuum in quantum gravity is relevant to that in the SM.