Postmodern Technicolor

Using new insights into strongly coupled gauge theories arising from analytic calculations and lattice simulations, we explore a framework for technicolor model building that relies on a non-trivial infrared fixed point, and an essential role for QCD. Interestingly, the models lead to a simple relation between the electroweak scale and the QCD confinement scale, and to the possible existence of exotic leptoquarks with masses of several hundred GeV. Electroweak symmetry breaking and fermion mass generation are still open problems in particle physics. The minimal standard model can account for all current experiments, but, with its light Higgs boson, is technically unnatural. An early proposal for avoiding this problem was given in the form of a new scaled-up, QCD-like interaction: technicolor (TC). Problems with accounting for the charm and strange quark masses without flavor changing neutral currents ruled out such a simple possibility and led to the development of modern TC theories [1], known as walking TC: theories with vanishing or small ultraviolet β functions. Precision electroweak measurements have shown, however, that even walking