Cosmological Evolution of the Higgs Boson's Vacuum Expectation Value

Abstract

We point out that the expansion of the universe leads to a cosmological time evolution of the vacuum expectation of the Higgs boson. Within the standard model of particle physics, the cosmological time evolution of the vacuum expectation of the Higgs leads to a cosmological time evolution of the masses of the fermions and of the electroweak gauge bosons while the scale of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) remains constant. Precise measurements of the cosmological time evolution of $\mu=m_e/m_p$, where $m_e$ and $m_p$ are respectively the electron and proton mass (which is essentially determined by the QCD scale), therefore provide a test of the standard models of particle physics and of cosmology. This ratio can be measured using modern atomic clocks.