2025/11/12 by Chishtie, Farrukh A., Homayouni, Sirous
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2511.09601
We demonstrate that Standard Model vacuum stability exhibits extreme sensitivity to the Higgs quartic coupling: a mere 3% enhancement represents the critical threshold separating metastability from absolute stability with UV Landau poles. Using three-loop renormalization group equations, we systematically investigate enhancement factors k = λ\rm enhanced/λ\rm SM ranging from k=1.0 (Standard Model) to k=7.2 (radiative electroweak symmetry breaking prediction). We identify k\rm crit = 1.03 as the marginal case where the coupling transitions from negative to positive evolution at high energies. For k > 1.03, the theory exhibits absolute vacuum stability and develops UV poles at Λ\rm UV ∼ 1016--1018 GeV, signaling effective field theory breakdown and the onset of strong dynamics. The radiative symmetry breaking scenario with k ≈ 7.2 falls deep in this regime, naturally connecting the electroweak scale to compositeness or other strong-coupling physics near the GUT scale. Our results reveal that the 125 GeV Higgs mass, lying near the metastability boundary, makes the scalar sector an exceptionally sensitive probe of beyond-Standard-Model physics.