A shift symmetry in the Higgs sector: experimental hints and stringy realizations

摘要

We interpret reported hints of a Standard Model Higgs boson at ~ 125 GeV in terms of high-scale supersymmetry breaking with a shift symmetry in the Higgs sector. More specifically, the Higgs mass range suggested by recent LHC data extrapolates, within the (non-supersymmetric) Standard Model, to a vanishing quartic Higgs coupling at a UV scale between 106 and 1018 GeV. Such a small value of λ can be understood in terms of models with high-scale SUSY breaking if the Kähler potential possesses a shift symmetry, i.e., if it depends on H u and H d only in the combination (({H_u} + {overline H_d})). This symmetry is known to arise rather naturally in certain heterotic compactifications. We suggest that such a structure of the Higgs Kähler potential is common in a wider class of string constructions, including intersecting D7- and D6-brane models and their extensions to F-theory or M- theory. The latest LHC data may thus be interpreted as hinting to a particular class of compactifications which possess this shift symmetry.