The Electroweak Vacuum Decay and the Gravitational Contribution

Understand

Whether the Standard Model electroweak vacuum is stable, metastable or unstable depends crucially on the top mass (and, to a lesser extent, on other measurable quantities).

• These topics are reviewed and updated by taking into account the most recent determination of the top and Higgs masses.
• Moreover, the correction to the vacuum decay due to Einstein gravity is described.
• This process is also discussed in a scenario, called softened gravity, which has been proposed as a solution of the Higgs mass hierarchy problem.