Standard model Higgs boson mass from borderline metastability of the vacuum - art. no. 113014

We study imposing the condition that the standard model effective Higgs pot ential should have two approximately degenerate vacua, such that the vacuum we live in is just barely metastable: the one in which we live has a vacuu m expectation value of 246 GeV and the other one should have a vacuum expec tation value of the order of the Planck scale. Alone borderline metastabili ty gives, using the experimental top quark mass 173.1+/-4.6 GeV. the Higgs boson mass prediction 121.8+/-11 I GeV. The requirement that the second min imum be at the Planck scale already gave the prediction 173+/-4 GeV for the top quark mass according to our 1995 paper.