Renormalization group flow of the Higgs potential

Abstract

Using the Wetterich equation we study the renormalization group flow of a Higgs-Yukawa model, enjoying a chiral Z2 symmetry and with fermions being coupled to a SU(N) gauge field. Applying a systematic derivative expansion to the effective action and introducing a finite cut-off we are able to test a wide range of UV set ups while keeping the IR properties of the model fixed by means of experimental data such as top mass and the Higgs vacuum expectation value. The IR value of the Higgs mass however is understood as a function of the chosen UV set up and the cut-off. As a result, lower Higgs mass bounds arise in a natural way by the renormalization group flow itself, without making further assumptions on the (in)stability of the effective potential. We showed that by considering non-quartic UV potentials and higher-dimensional Yukawa operators, IR Higgs masses below the conventional bound can be generated.