玉美人传媒

Cosmic Instability Could Have Created Dark Matter

Our Universe may be sitting on the edge of destruction, as theory suggests that the Higgs field is in a metastable state. If this field tunneled to its 鈥渢rue鈥� minimum energy state, the release of energy would be cataclysmic. The danger may be over-stated, as other physical mechanisms could have kept the Universe stable throughout its history. Nevertheless, the Higgs instability could have a major cosmological impact as the source of dark matter. According to this new scenario, dark matter consists of a large population of black holes that formed from fluctuations in the unstable Higgs field at the dawn of the Universe. These so-called primordial black holes have been proposed before, but this is the first hypothesis that doesn鈥檛 require physics beyond the standard model.

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Physicists have long been aware that the Universe might rest in a 鈥渇alse vacuum.鈥� This idea has recently taken on new urgency, as calculations based on the measured Higgs mass have shown that a lower energy state may exist for the Higgs field. Analyzing the implications of the Higgs instability, Jos茅 Espinosa, from the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) in Spain, and David Racco and Antonio Riotto, both at the 玉美人传媒, have found that this menacing mechanism could鈥攃ounterintuitively鈥攂e instrumental in creating the dark matter that makes galaxies and other life-accommodating structures possible. In their calculations, the team explored fluctuations in the Higgs field during an early expansion phase of the Universe, called inflation. Under certain assumptions, these fluctuations become seeds for microscopic black holes with masses around听10^15听kg that could have a density consistent with cosmological predictions of dark matter.

This research is published in听.