Crawling Technicolor

We analyze the Callan-Symanzik equations when scale invariance at a nontrivial infrared (IR) fixed point alpha(IR) is realized in the Nambu-Goldstone (NG) mode. As a result, Green's functions at alpha(IR) do not scale in the same way as for the conventional Wigner-Weyl (WW) mode. This allows us to propose a new mechanism for dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking where the running coupling alpha "crawls" towards (but does not pass) alpha(IR) in the exact IR limit. The NG mechanism at alpha(IR) implies the existence of a massless dilaton sigma, which becomes massive for IR expansions in epsilon equivalent to alpha(IR) - alpha and is identified with the Higgs boson. Unlike "dilatons" that are close to a WW-mode fixed point or associated with a Coleman-Weinberg potential, our NG-mode dilaton is genuine and hence naturally light. Its (mass)(2) is proportional to epsilon beta'(4 + beta')F-sigma(-2) <(G) over cap (2)>(vac), where beta' is the (positive) slope of the beta function at alpha(IR), F-sigma is the dilaton decay constant and <(G) over cap (2)>(vac) is the technigluon condensate. Our effective field theory for this works because it respects Zumino's consistency condition for dilaton Lagrangians. We find a closed form of the Higgs potential with beta'-dependent deviations from that of the Standard Model. Flavor-changing neutral currents are suppressed if the crawling region alpha less than or similar to alpha(IR) includes a sufficiently large range of energies above the TeV scale. In Appendix A, we observe that, contrary to folklore, condensates protect fields from decoupling in the IR limit.