Naturalness, Hierarchy, and Fine Tuning

Session

Friday morning

2 Mar 2018, 09:00

SuperC (Generali-Saal) (Aachen)

4. Naturalness, critical phenomena and new routes to UV-complete theories

Holger Gies

02/03/2018, 09:00

The hierarchy problem and thus the absence of technical naturalness in the standard model is not an inconsistency of our theoretical description of fundamental physics, but may rather be viewed as an aesthetic blemish. Renormalization theory of critical phenomena suggests that the amount of unpleasantness can be quantified by critical exponents which are intrinsic properties of a particle...

42. Discussion

02/03/2018, 09:40

35. Finetuning and Free Parameters

Richard Dawid (University of Stockholm)

02/03/2018, 10:00

The paper discusses the way in which the perspective of a universal fundamental theory without free parameters changes the role of finetuning arguments in physics. It has been suggested that finetuning arguments merely express aesthetic preferences. The assumption of a fundamental theory without free parameters allows for a substantially stronger role of finetuning arguments that is more...

43. Discussion

02/03/2018, 10:40

23. Simplicity and Effectiveness in Physics of the Unknown

Alexei Grinbaum (CEA)

02/03/2018, 11:20

If physics is a science that unveils the fundamental laws of nature, then the
appearance of mathematical concepts in its language can be surprising or even mysterious. This was Eugene Wigner’s argument in 1960. The debate on naturalness brings forth a tension between the values of effectiveness and simplicity of the mathematical formalism. On the examples of the S-matrix approach in quantum...

44. Discussion

02/03/2018, 12:00