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Gauge Field Fluctuations Protect the Higgs Vacuum When a Small Universe Begins
Abstract
The Standard Model Higgs quartic coupling λ turns negative at high energies. We show that in a small periodic box with antiperiodic fermions, zero-point fluctuations of the constant gauge modes turn the Higgs zero mode into a resonance for λ<0, whose width falls exponentially in |λ|−1/2. A box lasting N light-crossing times keeps its vacuum with probability above 1/2 for λ>λc(N), which depends on N only logarithmically. For a universe that begins at a Casimir turning point, λc≈−0.012 lies below the Standard Model value −0.0098; given a curvature coupling ξH≳0.08, survival has probability above 1/2 for mt<172.96 GeV and ≈0.7 for current data, and FCC-ee can exclude this beginning if mt≳173.7 GeV.
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BibTeX
@misc{zhang2026gauge,
title = {{Gauge Field Fluctuations Protect the Higgs Vacuum When a Small Universe Begins}},
author = {Alan Zhang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.28704},
eprint = {2610.28704},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28704},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gauge Field Fluctuations Protect the Higgs Vacuum When a Small Universe Begins
AU - Alan Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.28704
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28704
AB - The Standard Model Higgs quartic coupling λ turns negative at high energies. We show that in a small periodic box with antiperiodic fermions, zero-point fluctuations of the constant gauge modes turn the Higgs zero mode into a resonance for λ<0, whose width falls exponentially in |λ|^−1/2. A box lasting N light-crossing times keeps its vacuum with probability above 1/2 for λ>λ_c(N), which depends on N only logarithmically. For a universe that begins at a Casimir turning point, λ_c≈−0.012 lies below the Standard Model value −0.0098; given a curvature coupling ξ_H≳0.08, survival has probability above 1/2 for m_t<172.96 GeV and ≈0.7 for current data, and FCC-ee can exclude this beginning if m_t≳173.7 GeV.
ER -