Goldstone modes and the Higgs condensation beyond one loop

We study the Higgs condensation H = 〈tt〉 mechanism in the Top-mode Standard Model at the next-to-leading order in 1Nc. The calculation includes the effects of the Goldstone fields, but not the effects of the transverse components of the electroweak gauge bosons. The resulting effective theory is parametrized by means of a finite energy cut-off Λ at which the condensation is supposed to take place. Demanding that the next-to-leading order contributions do not dominate over the leading order ones, we get a rather low bound for the cut-off: Λ = O(1 TeV). QCD effects can change the results somewhat, but the basic conclusions remain unchanged. The inclusion of the Goldstone degrees of freedom tends to decrease the bound on Λ.