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SUMMARY:Cancelling the vacuum energy and Weyl anomaly in the standard mode
 l with dimension zero scalars - Neil Turok (University of Edinburgh and Pe
 rimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)
DTSTART:20211110T141500Z
DTEND:20211110T151500Z
UID:TALK164437@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:104116
DESCRIPTION:In recent work with Latham Boyle (see arXiv:2110.06258) we poi
 nt out that\, at leading order\, the vacuum energy and the Weyl anomaly in
  the gauge/fermion part of the standard model are cancelled by 36 Weyl-inv
 ariant\, dimension zero scalars. The cancellations are highly nontrivial: 
 assuming the gauge group SU3xSU2xU1\, they require precisely 3 generations
  of standard model fermions\, each including a right-handed neutrino. Many
  candidate extensions of the standard model including popular grand unifie
 d theories are ruled out by this criterion. The extra scalars have a four-
 derivative action with potential for ghosts. However\, in a careful Euclid
 ean treatment consistent with our recent proposal (see arXiv:2109.06204)\,
  we show that a physical state space with only positive energies and norms
  may be identified. The dimension zero scalars possess a scale-invariant p
 ower spectrum in their quantum vacuum\, suggesting a new\, first-principle
 s explanation of the scalar perturbations in cosmology not requiring infla
 tion. As pointed out earlier\, one of the three right handed neutrinos is 
 the simplest yet proposed candidate for the dark matter. This remarkable c
 ombination of predictions\, spanning a huge range of scales\, suggests dim
 ension zero scalars might play a basic role in fundamental physics. If tim
 e allows\, I will briefly discuss the possible emergence of the Higgs fiel
 d and the spacetime metric\, within this framework.
LOCATION:HYBRID - Details to be sent by email
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