When Higgs Meets Starobinsky in the Early Universe
Abstract
The measurement of the Higgs mass at the LHC has confirmed that the Standard Model electroweak vacuum is a shallow local minimum and is not absolutely stable. In addition to a probable unacceptably fast tunneling to the deep true minimum, it is not clear how the observable present-day vacuum could be reached from the early Universe particularly following inflation. In this note it is shown that these problems can be alleviated if the Higgs field is non-minimally coupled to a higher-curvature theory of gravity which is effective in deriving inflation a la Starobinsky. Moreover, it implies that the Higgs self-coupling could be enhanced and have an observable effect at the next generation of particle colliders.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.1744,
title = {When Higgs Meets Starobinsky in the Early Universe},
author = {Mahdi Torabian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.1744},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
5 pages, 4 figures, v2: typo corrected in figures and text, references added, a more detailed prediction provided in the last section