The Weak Scale as a Trigger

Abstract: I discuss settings where the Higgs mass squared affects the vacuum expectation value of local operators and can thus act as a “trigger” of new cosmological dynamics. This triggering mechanism underlies several existing solutions to the hierarchy problem that trace the origin of the weak scale to the early history of the Universe. Thinking about these solutions more systematically from the point of view of weak scale triggers allows to understand their common predictions, to find new solutions and to identify unexpected physics related to naturalness in a rather model-independent way. As an example I discuss a BSM trigger in a Two Higgs Doublet Model and show how it can be used to link the tuning of the Higgs mass to that of the cosmological constant. This weak scale trigger demands the existence of new Higgs states necessarily comparable to or lighter than the weak scale, with no wiggle room to decouple them.