Gauge-invariant Higgs boson mass bounds from the physical effective potential
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 (United States)
We study a simplified version of the standard electroweak model and introduce the concept of the physical gauge-invariant effective potential in terms of matrix elements of the Hamiltonian in physical states. This procedure allows an unambiguous identification of the symmetry breaking order parameter and the resulting effective potential as the energy in a constrained state. We explicitly compute the physical effective potential at one loop order and improve it using the renormalization group. This construction allows us to extract a reliable, gauge-invariant bound on the scalar mass by unambiguously obtaining the scale at which new physics should emerge to preclude vacuum instability. Comparison is made with popular gauge-fixing procedures and an {open_quotes}error{close_quotes} estimate is provided between the Landau gauge-fixed and the gauge-invariant results. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}
- OSTI ID:
- 566077
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review, D, Journal Name: Physical Review, D Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 57; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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