Mette Lund Kristensen

Partially composite Higgs models: phenomenology and RG analysis

A bstractWe study the phenomenology of partially composite-Higgs models where electroweak symmetry breaking is dynamically induced, and the Higgs is a mixture of a composite and an elementary state. The models considered have explicit realizations in terms of gauge-Yukawa theories with new strongly interacting fermions coupled to elementary scalars and allow for a very SM-like Higgs state. We study constraints on their parameter spaces from vacuum stability and perturbativity as well as from LHC results and find that requiring vacuum stability up to the compositeness scale already imposes relevant constraints. A small part of parameter space around the classically conformal limit is stable up to the Planck scale. This is however already strongly disfavored by LHC results. in different limits, the models realize both (partially) composite-Higgs and (bosonic) technicolor models and a dynamical extension of the fundamental Goldstone-Higgs model. Therefore, they provide a general framework for exploring the phenomenology of composite dynamics.

Mindfulness and resonance in an era of acceleration: a critical inquiry

Abstract The paper emerges from the trend toward a commodification of mindfulness practices, known as McMindfulness. Drawing on a critique of late-modern temporality, the paper examines the use of mindfulness practices as a remedy for the consequences of societal acceleration. However, the paper suggests that mindfulness practices risk reinforcing the problems they were expected to solve. Against the backdrop of the notion of resonance, the paper suggests a non-instrumental path for mindfulness practices, which have the potential to counterbalance the acceleration in social and working life and to provide the basis for the good life by assisting experiences of resonant relationships. However, the institutionalized capitalistic logic that permeates societal acceleration challenges legitimation of such mindfulness-based experiences of resonance. Therefore, the paper advocates more humanistic logic that embraces deeply rooted universal human capacities and needs for attention, awareness, relationality, and caring.