Natural Emergence of the Higgs Boson from a Critical Dissipative Continuum

We propose a novel origin for the Higgs boson based on emergence in an Open Effective Field Theory (Open–EFT) framework. The Higgs field is treated as an open quantum system interacting with a critical, dissipative continuum. Its mass and width arise dynamically from a complex, non-local self-energy generated by the environment, while the bare mass is strictly set to zero, m0 = 0. Solving the complex pole equation, we obtain a physical Higgs mass mH = 125.2506 GeV and a total width ΓH = 4.09 MeV, in excellent agreement with Standard Model expectations and current experimental constraints. The associated Barbieri–Giudice naturalness measure is found to be ∆BG ≃ 4.3%, indicating that the electroweak scale emerges without significant fine-tuning. The residue of the propagator at the pole is predicted to be Z ≃ 0.36, implying that the Higgs behaves as an emergent resonance with sizeable continuum admixture. In a non-local Open–EFT, effective Higgs interactions are generically momentum-dependent; we adopt the minimal hypothesis that the dominant suppression occurs in the off-shell regime at large invariant mass while remaining compatible with on-shell Higgs-rate fits. This yields a characteristic prediction for the ATLAS off-shell signal strength μoff-shell ≃ Z2 ≈ 0.13, consistent with current likelihood constraints. Our framework provides a causal and natural explanation of the Higgs pole properties and delivers concrete, falsifiable predictions for precision off-shell measurements at the High-Luminosity LHC and future colliders. (beniaiche_ahmed25@yahoo.fr)