I will discuss settings where the Higgs mass squared affects the vacuum expectation value of local operators and can thus act as a “trigger” of new cosmological dynamics. This triggering mechanism underlies several existing solutions to the hierarchy problem that trace the origin of the weak scale to the early history of the Universe. Thinking about these solutions more systematically from the point of view of weak scale triggers allows to understand their common predictions, to find new solutions and to identify unexpected physics related to naturalness in a rather model-independent way. As an example I discuss a BSM trigger in a Two Higgs Doublet Model and show how it can be used to link the tuning of the Higgs mass to that of the cosmological constant. This weak scale trigger demands the existence of new Higgs states necessarily comparable to or lighter than the weak scale, with no wiggle room to decouple them.

The long-persisting discrepancy between the Standard Model prediction of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (aµ) and its latest measurement provides an intriguing hint to new physics. Since 2017, the Muon g − 2 Theory Initiative has assessed the theoretical prediction for aµ, focusing on the contributions from the strong interaction, which account for the dominant part of the uncertainty. The latest estimate for the Standard Model prediction, which was published in a recent White Paper, has failed to resolve the discrepancy with the experimental measurement at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which stands at 3.7 standard deviations. At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA, the Muon g-2 collaboration is performing a new measurement of aµ aiming at an ultimately fourfold smaller uncertainty than achieved with the predecessor experiment. To extract the value of aµ a clock comparison experiment is performed with spin-polarized muons confined in a superbly controlled electric and magnetic field environment. The deviation of the Larmor from the cyclotron frequency, the anomalous spin precession frequency, is determined while a high-precision measurement of the magnetic field environment is performed using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques. We will provide an introduction to the current theory prediction before we will present and discuss the first results of the FNAL experiment from its 2018 science run.

TBA