Asymptotic safety in the dark

Understand

We explore the Renormalization Group flow of massive uncharged fermions -- a candidate for dark matter -- coupled to a scalar field through a Higgs portal.

• We find that fermionic fluctuations can lower the bound on the scalar mass that arises from vacuum stability.
• Further, we discuss that despite the perturbative nonrenormalizability of the model, it could be ultraviolet complete at an asymptotically safe fixed point.
• In our approximation, this simple model exhibits two mechanisms for asymptotic safety: a balance of fermionic and bosonic fluctuations generates a fixed point in the scalar self-interaction; asymptotic safety in the portal coupling is triggered through a balance of canonical scaling and quantum fluctuations.