The triviality bound on the Higgs mass; its value and what it means

Abstract

Older lattice work exploring the Higgs mass triviality bound is briefly reviewed. It indicates that a strongly interacting scalar sector in the minimal standard model cannot exist; on the other hand low energy QCD phenomenology might be interpreted as an indication that it could. We attack this puzzle using the $1/N$ expansion and discover a simple criterion for selecting a lattice action that is more likely to produce a heavy Higgs particle. Depending on the precise form of the limitation put on the cutoff effects, our large $N$ calculations, when combined with old numerical data, suggest that the Higgs mass bound might be around 750 $GeV$, which is higher than the $\sim 650~GeV$ previously obtained. Preliminary numerical work indicates that an increase of at least 19\% takes place at $N=4$ on the $F_4$ lattice when the old simple action is replaced with a new action (still containing only nearest neighbor interactions) if one uses the lattice spacing as the physical cutoff for both actions. It appears that, while a QCD like theory could produce $M_H / F ~ \sim 6$, a meaningful ``minimal elementary Higgs'' theory cannot have M_H/ F~ \gtapprox 3. Still, even at 750 $GeV$, the Higgs particle is so wide ($\sim 290~$GeV), that one cannot argue any more that the scalar sector is weakly coupled.Comment: 8 pages. Latex file with 4 ps figures included. Preprint RU-92-22, SCRI-92-11