🚀 go-pugleaf

[discussion of nucleating the "true vacuum" in a laboratory experiment]

mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin) writes:
> In the Standard Model, for instance, the world is generally built upon
> the true vacuum.

Ha!  The Standard Model surprises you again!  If the top is heavy and the
Higgs is light (but with "reasonable" values), the Standard Model predicts
our vacuum is metastable; see
  P. Arnold & S. Vokos, Phys.Rev.D44:3620 (1991)
  G. Anderson, Phys.Lett.B243:265 (1990)

If the Higgs mass were 60 GeV, Arnold & Vokos calculate our vacuum would
be metastable for m_t > 125 GeV; it would already have decayed (by thermal
excitation in the hot early universe) for m_t > 140 GeV; and it would
already have decayed (by T=0 quantum tunneling) for m_t > 145 GeV.  This
can be considered a constraint on the top mass: m_t < 140 GeV.  For a
heavier Higgs, this constraint is somewhat relaxed.

(Both Eric Carlson & Larry Hall probably know of these papers, since
Stamatis Vokos and Greg Anderson are both LBL grads.)

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