Revisiting the naturalness problem: Who is afraid of quadratic divergences?

Abstract

It is widely believed that quadratic divergences severely restrict natural constructions of particle physics models beyond the standard model (SM). Supersymmetry provides a beautiful solution, but the recent LHC experiments have excluded large parameter regions of supersymmetric extensions of the SM. It will now be important to reconsider whether we have been misinterpreting the quadratic divergences in field theories. In this paper, we revisit the problem from the viewpoint of the Wilsonian renormalization group and argue that quadratic divergences---which can always be absorbed into a position of the critical surface---should be simply subtracted in model constructions. Such a picture gives another justification to the argument [W. A. Bardeen, Report No. FERMILAB-CONF-95-391-T] that the scale invariance of the SM, except for the soft-breaking terms, is an alternative solution to the naturalness problem. It also largely broadens possibilities of model constructions beyond the SM since we just need to take care of logarithmic divergences, which cause mixings of various physical scales and runnings of couplings.