Speaker
Description
Non-supersymmetric strongly interacting gauge theories can provide ultraviolet completions of the Higgs sector of the Standard Model that address several outstanding problems at the energy frontier of particle physics: the absence of new particle discoveries across a wide energy range above the electroweak scale, the proximity of the top quark mass to the electroweak scale, and the nature of dark matter. The Sp(4) gauge theory with two degenerate fermion flavours in the fundamental representation and three in the antisymmetric representation offers a comparatively minimal template for Higgs compositeness and top partial compositeness arising from a beyond-the-Standard-Model strong interaction. I will present recent lattice results for this model and for its restriction to phenomenologically relevant sectors, at both zero and finite temperature. I will emphasise methodological advances alongside implications for the viability of Higgs compositeness, with discussion of potential connections to dark matter and to the prospect of detecting a primordial gravitational wave spectrum sourced by early-universe phase transitions.