9,426 research outputs found
Composite Higgs under LHC Experimental Scrutiny
The LHC has been built to understand the dynamics at the origin of the
breaking of the electroweak symmetry. Weakly coupled models with a fundamental
Higgs boson have focused most of the attention of the experimental searches. We
will discuss here how to reinterpret these searches in the context of strongly
coupled models where the Higgs boson emerges as a composite particle. In
particular, we use LHC data to constrain the compositeness scale. We also
briefly review the prospects to observe other bosonic and fermionic resonances
of the strong sector.Comment: 6 pages. Contribution to the proceedings of Hadron Collider Physics
Symposium 2011, Paris Nov. 14-1
First Glimpses at Higgs' face
The 8 TeV LHC Higgs search data just released indicates the existence of a
scalar resonance with mass ~ 125 GeV. We examine the implications of the data
reported by ATLAS, CMS and the Tevatron collaborations on understanding the
properties of this scalar by performing joint fits on its couplings to other
Standard Model particles. We discuss and characterize to what degree this
resonance has the properties of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs, and consider
what implications can be extracted for New Physics in a (mostly)
model-independent fashion. We find that, if the Higgs couplings to fermions and
weak vector bosons are allowed to differ from their standard values, the SM is
~ 2 sigma from the best fit point to current data. Fitting to a possible
invisible decay branching ratio, we find BR_{inv} = 0.05\pm 0.32\ (95% C.L.) We
also discuss and develop some ways of using the data in order to bound or rule
out models which modify significantly the properties of this scalar resonance
and apply these techniques to the global current data set.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figures, v2 post ICHEP data updat
On the Naturalness of Higgs Inflation
We critically examine the recent claim that the Standard Model Higgs boson
could drive inflation in agreement with observations if has a strong coupling to the Ricci curvature scalar. We
first show that the effective theory approach upon which that claim is based
ceases to be valid beyond a cutoff scale , where is the
reduced Planck mass. We then argue that knowing the Higgs potential profile for
the field values relevant for inflation () requires knowledge of the ultraviolet completion of the SM beyond
. In absence of such microscopic theory, the extrapolation of the pure
SM potential beyond is unwarranted and the scenario is akin to other
ad-hoc inflaton potentials afflicted with significant fine-tuning. The
appealing naturalness of this minimal proposal is therefore lost.Comment: 9 pages. Replaced with published version, plus a footnote clarifying
the use of power counting estimate
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