Abstract
The appearance of the light Higgs boson at the LHC is difficult to explain, particularly in light of naturalness arguments in quantum field theory. However, light scalars can appear in condensed matter systems when parameters (like the amount of doping) are tuned to a critical point. At zero temperature these quantum critical points are directly analogous to the finely tuned standard model. In this paper, we explore a class of models with a Higgs near a quantum critical point that exhibits non-mean-field behavior. We discuss the parametrization of the effects of a Higgs emerging from such a critical point in terms of form factors, and present two simple realistic scenarios based on either generalized free fields or a 5D dual in anti–de Sitter space. For both of these models, we consider the processes and , which can be used to gain information about the Higgs scaling dimension and IR transition scale from the experimental data.
- Received 26 January 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.041050
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Popular Summary
In this paper we explore a class of models with a Higgs near a quantum critical point that exhibits non-mean-field behavior. We discuss the parametrization of the effects of a Higgs emerging from such a critical point in terms of form factors, and present two simple realistic scenarios based on either generalized free fields or a 5D dual in AdS space. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 revolutionized particle physics and turned the long-standing puzzle about its existence into an experimentally accessible question at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): Why is the Higgs boson light? Why is the standard model of particle physics near a critical point? Despite the Higgs boson being consistent with the standard model of particle physics, the origin of the mass of the elementary particles and the lightness of the Higgs boson remain a mystery.
Some theories have put forth the idea that light scalars can be realized by tuning parameters close to a critical value. Here, we search for low-energy manifestations of these theories consistent with a light Higgs boson particle. As part of our work, we propose experimental observations associated with our theories that might be measureable at the LHC. We explore a class of models with a Higgs boson near a quantum critical point that exhibits non-mean-field behavior. We discuss the parametrization of the effects of a Higgs boson emerging from such a critical point in terms of form factors, and we present two simple realistic scenarios based on either generalized free fields or a 5D dual in anti–de Sitter space. We additionally study how the production of pairs of Higgs bosons might inform our knowledge of these particles.
We expect that our findings will motivate novel analyses of future LHC data to better understand the Higgs boson.