Electroweak Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson of broken scale invariance

We point out that it is possible to associate the electroweak Higgs boson with the pseudo-Goldstone boson of broken scale invariance, thus resolving the hierarchy problem in a technically natural way. We illustrate this idea with two specific gauge models. Besides being consistent with all currently available experimental data, both models maintain the predictive power of the standard model, since the first model has only one additional parameter beyond the standard model, and the second has the same number of free parameters as the standard model.Comment: 11 pages, discussion added, the version to appear in Phys. Lett.

Early Universe cosmology in the light of the mirror dark matter interpretation of the DAMA/Libra signal

Mirror dark matter provides a simple framework for which to explain the DAMA/Libra annual modulation signal consistently with the null results of the other direct detection experiments. The simplest possibility involves ordinary matter interacting with mirror dark matter via photon-mirror photon kinetic mixing of strength epsilon ~ 10^(-9). We confirm that photon-mirror photon mixing of this magnitude is consistent with constraints from ordinary Big Bang nucleosynthesis as well as the more stringent constraints from cosmic microwave background measurements and large scale structure considerations.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure; updated computations for T'(T), removed computation of Y

Alternative implementation of the Higgs boson

We discuss an alternative implementation of the Higgs boson within the Standard Model which is possible if the renormalizability condition is relaxed. Namely, at energy scale $\Lambda$ the Higgs boson interacts at tree-level only with matter fermions, while the full gauge invariance is still maintained. The interactions with the electroweak gauge bosons are induced at low energies through the radiative corrections. In this scenario the Higgs boson can be arbitrarily heavy, interacting with the Standard Model fields arbitrarily weakly. No violation of unitarity in the scattering of longitudinal electroweak bosons occurs, since they become unphysical degrees of freedom at energies $\Lambda \sim \mathrm{TeV}$.Comment: 7 pages. v2 - minor corrections; to be published in MPL

Primordial He' abundance implied by the mirror dark matter interpretation of the DAMA/Libra signal

We compute the primordial mirror helium He' mass fraction emerging from Big Bang nucleosynthesis in the mirror sector of particles in the presence of kinetic mixing between photons and mirror photons. We explore the kinetic mixing parameter (epsilon) values relevant for cosmology and which are also currently probed by the dark matter direct detection experiments. In particular, we find that for epsilon \sim 10^{-9}, as suggested by the DAMA/Libra and other experiments, a large He' mass fraction (Y_{He'} \approx 90%) is produced. Such a large value of the primordial He' mass fraction will have important implications for the mirror dark matter interpretation of the direct detection experiments, as well as for the study of mirror star formation and evolution.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Quark-lepton symmetric model at the LHC

We investigate the quark-lepton symmetric model of Foot and Lew in the context of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this `bottom-up' extension to the Standard Model, quark-lepton symmetry is achieved by introducing a gauged `leptonic colour' symmetry which is spontaneously broken above the electroweak scale. If this breaking occurs at the TeV scale, then we expect new physics to be discovered at the LHC. We examine three areas of interest: the Z$'$ heavy neutral gauge boson, charge $\pm1/2$ exotic leptons, and a colour triplet scalar diquark. We find that the LHC has already explored and/or will explore new parameter space for these particles over the course of its lifetime.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure