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arXiv:0912.0208hep-th

Asymptotic safety of gravity and the Higgs boson mass

Mikhail Shaposhnikov, Christof Wetterich

Abstract

There are indications that gravity is asymptotically safe. The Standard Model (SM) plus gravity could be valid up to arbitrarily high energies. Supposing that this is indeed the case and assuming that there are no intermediate energy scales between the Fermi and Planck scales we address the question of whether the mass of the Higgs boson $m_H$ can be predicted. For a positive gravity induced anomalous dimension $A_λ>0$ the running of the quartic scalar self interaction $λ$ at scales beyond the Planck mass is determined by a fixed point at zero. This results in $m_H=m_{\rm min}=126$ GeV, with only a few GeV uncertainty. This prediction is independent of the details of the short distance running and holds for a wide class of extensions of the SM as well. For $A_λ<0$ one finds $m_H$ in the interval $m_{\rm min}< m_H < m_{\rm max}\simeq 174$ GeV, now sensitive to $A_λ$ and other properties of the short distance running. The case $A_λ>0$ is favored by explicit computations existing in the literature.

arXiv comments
8 pages, typos corrected, references added. Journal version
Journal reference
Phys.Lett.B683:196-200,2010
DOI
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2009.12.022
Subjects
hep-thHigh Energy Physics, Theory gr-qcGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmology hep-phHigh Energy Physics, Phenomenology

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    • Asymptotic Safety also predicted the higgs mass (126 GeV vs the measured value of 125 GeV). https://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0208 The trick is, at that time most of the possible mass range was excluded experimentally, so it is a bit less impressive. I'm not sure how much tuning went…

      noslenwerdnaView on HNParent context

    • The central concept behind Christof Wetterich's proposal is scale invariance: Imagine you try to measure the size of the universe with a yard stick. If you measure that the universe is expanding, you can't be sure that it really is the universe expanding, or maybe just your yard…

      mpaulyView on HNParent context

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