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![]() The Fate of the Higgs VacuumAdd to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal
If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mike Gunn. Now that the Higgs boson has finally been detected, its mass suggests that we are in a region of “metastability”, with various claims being made about the lifetime of the vacuum. However, the new minimum lies in a Planckian regime, and we would expect gravity to be relevant in any decay process. The decay of a false vacuum is always described by a tunneling process, the Coleman-de Luccia instanton, however, this assumes our universe is featureless. Just as impurities can act as nucleation sites of a phase transition, gravitational impurities, in the guise of black holes, can act as bubble nucleation sites for false vacuum decay. I will describe how a black hole can significantly enhance the probability of vacuum decay, and discuss implications for the Higgs vacuum. This talk is part of the Theoretical Physics Seminars series. This talk is included in these lists:Note that ex-directory lists are not shown. |
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