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O-5 - With measured Higgs and top masses the SM electroweak vacuum is metastable with lifetime vastly exceeding the age of the universe

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Properties7
type
observation
id
O-5
statement
Extrapolating the pure SM (no new physics below M_Pl) with the measured Higgs and top masses, the effective potential turns negative at an instability scale of 10^(11+-1) GeV, but quantum tunneling out of the electroweak vacuum is slow enough that the SM parameters lie well inside the meta-stability region of the phase diagram - the expected vacuum lifetime enormously exceeds the age of the universe.
source
S-20 - Degrassi et al. 2012, Higgs mass and vacuum stability in the Standard Model at NNLO
locator
§3.3, fig. 5; §5
quote
Quantum tunneling is sufficiently slow to ensure at least metastability of the EW vacuum
link_state
linked

This is the modern data-driven verdict on spontaneous electroweak vacuum decay: metastable, not unstable - the disfavored region is absolute stability (at 2 sigma), not safety. The instability scale for Mh = 125 GeV develops at 10^11+-1 GeV.

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