English

Higgs inflation at the critical point

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-06-19 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Higgs inflation can occur if the Standard Model (SM) is a self-consistent effective field theory up to inflationary scale. This leads to a lower bound on the Higgs boson mass, MhMcritM_h \geq M_{\text{crit}}. If MhM_h is more than a few hundreds of MeV above the critical value, the Higgs inflation predicts the universal values of inflationary indexes, r0.003r\simeq 0.003 and ns0.97n_s\simeq 0.97, independently on the Standard Model parameters. We show that in the vicinity of the critical point McritM_{\text{crit}} the inflationary indexes acquire an essential dependence on the mass of the top quark mtm_t and MhM_h. In particular, the amplitude of the gravitational waves can exceed considerably the universal value.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.6078,
  title  = {Higgs inflation at the critical point},
  author = {Fedor Bezrukov and Mikhail Shaposhnikov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.6078},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Improved analysis taking into account one-loop terms in the effective potential. Sign error in the formula for the running of the spectral index corrected. Discussion of the relation between the particle physics and inflationary parameters added