Global flow of the Higgs potential in a Yukawa model

Abstract

We study the renormalization flow of the Higgs potential as a function of both field amplitude and energy scale. This overcomes limitations of conventional techniques that rely, e.g., on an identification of field amplitude and RG scale, or on local field expansions. Using a Higgs-Yukawa model with discrete chiral symmetry as an example, our global flows in field space clarify the origin of possible meta-stabilities, the fate of the pseudo-stable phase, and provide new information about the renormalization of the tunnel barrier. Our results confirm the relaxation of the lower bound for the Higgs mass in the presence of more general microscopic interactions (higher-dimensional operators) to a high quantitative accuracy.