Origin of mass scales and hierarchies

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The news in particle physics the last few years has been dominated by discovery of the Higgs boson. This discovery completes the standard model and the origin of mass of all other particles can now be attributed to the Higgs mechanism. The impression may then be that the field is in a state of resolution and understanding, but in fact this is far from the case. An understanding of the Higgs mass itself is still lacking and the origin of the Higgs couplings to fermions is still unknown. In particular the observed value of the Higgs mass is deeply unnatural given the rules of quantum field theory. The lack of evidence for any other new physics at Run 1 at the LHC makes this conundrum especially severe. We propose to study two possibilities, with the expectation that Run 2 will decide which, if either, is close to reality. The first is that the Higgs description breaks down within the energy range of Run 2 at the LHC. I have and will continue to develop this type of theory and the predictions it makes. It implies an exciting time for experimental and theoretical physics as the new physics of the TeV scale unfolds. The second possibility is that evidence continues to build for an elementary Higgs boson. The theoretical implications in this case are far reaching and will require us to tightly constrain the theory up to extremely high energies. This is because of the sensitivity of the Higgs mass to all higher mass scales, including that of gravity. The problem of the Higgs mass is similar in some respects to the problem of dark energy in cosmology, and we view these problems as valuable clues to the quantum theory of gravity.