[Physics] 115 GeV, 170 GeV, and the non-commutative standard model

Question

Several years ago, noncommutative geometry was used to describe the standard model, somehow yielding a prediction of 170 GeV for the mass of the Higgs boson, a prediction which was falsified a few years later.

Meanwhile, for a long time there have been indications of a Higgs boson at 115 GeV. As it happens, 115 GeV and 170 GeV form somewhat natural theoretical bounds on the mass of the Higgs: above 170 GeV, the theory would develop a Landau pole, and below 115 GeV, the electroweak vacuum would become unstable.

So I'm wondering whether the mechanism or the logic behind the original prediction can be reversed, so as to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the non-commutative standard model.

EDIT: I am nowhere near decoding how the prediction of 170 GeV was made, but simple algebra shows that it is amazingly easy to get very close to 115 GeV instead, by adjusting some of the penultimate quantities appearing in the calculation.

A comment at Resonaances points out that $\sqrt{2} m_W$ is close to 115 GeV (it's a little over 113 GeV). In equation 5.15 of hep-th/0610241, we see this formula:

$$m_H = \sqrt{2\lambda}\frac{2M}{g} $$

On page 36 (section 4.1), we read that $M = m_W$ and $g = \sqrt{4\pi\alpha}$. So for $m_H$ to be approximately 115 GeV, we need $\lambda = \pi\alpha$.

In equation 5.10, we have that lambda-tilde is approximately $4/3 \pi\alpha_3$, and in remark 5.1 we read that "the factor of 4/3 in (5.10) should be corrected to 1". So we have $\tilde\lambda = \pi\alpha_3$. Almost what we need – it's just a different lambda and a different alpha! 🙂

And I'll point out again that 115 GeV is a special value theoretically: it's in a narrow range of values for m_H for which, given the measured value of m_top, the vacuum of the minimal standard model is metastable (see figure 13, arxiv:0704.2232). So I can't believe any of this is coincidence.

Answer 1

The question about the 170 GeV prediction is obsolete now.

But the issue:

to drive the Higgs mass to the lower bound, rather than to the upper bound, in an altered version of the noncommutative standard model

remains relevant and has been addressed indeed by an updated almost-commutative spectral extension of the standard model. This extension according to http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.8050 claims basically that:

[the] obstruction to lower [the Higgs mass] was overcome in http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.1030 simply by taking into account a scalar field which was already present in the full model which [was] computed previously in http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.3980. One lesson which [was] learned on that occasion is that [one has] to take all the fields of the noncommutative spectral model seriously, without making assumptions not backed up by valid analysis, especially because of the almost uniqueness of the Standard Model in the noncommutative setting.

Incidently this new neutral singlet scalar field (σ) comes originally from some Majorana term in the spectral action responsible for a type I see-saw mechanism implying existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610241). It is worth mentioning that this σ field can purpotedly stabilize the Higgs coupling and prevent it from becoming negative at higher energies thus make it consistent with its mass of 126 Gev, providing a vev for σ of the order of $10^{11}$ GeV compatible with the Majorana mass that could explain the actual neutrino phenomenology. This last choice of parameter can be interpreted as some fine-tuning ...