What can we learn from the 126 GeV Higgs boson for the Planck scale physics ? - Hierarchy problem and the stability of the vacuum -

Abstract

The discovery of the Higgs particle at around 126 GeV has given us a big hint towards the origin of the Higgs potential. The running quartic self-coupling decreases and crosses zero somewhere in the very high energy scale. It is usually considered as a signal of the instability of the standard model (SM) vacuum, but it can also indicate a link between the physics in the electroweak scale and the Planck scale. Furthermore, the LHC experiments as well as the flavor physics experiments give strong constraints on the physics beyond the SM. It urges us to reconsider the widely taken approach to the physics beyond the SM (BSM), namely the approach based on the gauge unification below the Planck scale and the resulting hierarchy problem. Motivated by the recent experiments, we first revisit the hierarchy problem and consider an alternative appoach based on a classical conformality of the SM without the Higgs mass term. In this talk, I review our recent proposal of a B-L extension of the SM with a flat Higgs potential at the Planck scale. This model can be an alternative solution to the hierarchy problem as well as being phenomenologically viable to explain the neutrino oscillations and the baryon asymmetry of the universe. With an assumption that the Higgs has a flat potential at the Planck scale, we show that the B-L symmetry is radiatively broken at the TeV scale via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism, and it triggers the electroweak symmetry breaking through a radiatively generated scalar mixing. The ratio of these two breaking scales is dynamically determined by the B-L gauge coupling.