Higgs mass and vacuum stability in the Standard Model at NNLO

TLDR

The near vanishing of the Higgs quartic coupling at the Planck scale raises questions about its role during inflation. The study presents the first complete next‑to‑next‑to‑leading‑order analysis of the Standard Model Higgs potential. Two‑loop QCD and Yukawa corrections to the λ–M_h relation were computed, reducing the uncertainty in the critical Higgs mass for vacuum stability to about 1 GeV. The quartic coupling is almost zero at the Planck scale, and absolute vacuum stability is excluded at 98 % confidence for M_h < 126 GeV.

Abstract

A bstract We present the first complete next-to-next-to-leading order analysis of the Standard Model Higgs potential. We computed the two-loop QCD and Yukawa corrections to the relation between the Higgs quartic coupling ( λ ) and the Higgs mass ( M h ), reducing the theoretical uncertainty in the determination of the critical value of M h for vacuum stability to 1 GeV. While λ at the Planck scale is remarkably close to zero, absolute stability of the Higgs potential is excluded at 98 % C.L. for M h &lt; 126 GeV. Possible consequences of the near vanishing of λ at the Planck scale, including speculations about the role of the Higgs field during inflation, are discussed.