Related papers: Gravitational corrections to Standard Model vacuum…
For a robust interpretation of upcoming observations from Planck and LHC experiments it is imperative to understand how the inflationary dynamics of a non-minimally coupled Higgs scalar field may affect the degeneracy of the inflationary…
The Standard Model Higgs boson with large nonminimal coupling to the gravitational curvature can drive cosmological inflation. We study this type of inflationary scenario in the context of supersymmetric grand unification and point out that…
We assume the validity of the Standard Model up to an arbitrary high-energy scale and discuss what information on the early stages of the Universe can be extracted from a measurement of the Higgs mass. For Mh < 130 GeV, the Higgs potential…
The measured (central) values of the Higgs and top quark masses indicate that the Standard Model (SM) effective potential develops an instability at high field values. The scale of this instability, determined as the Higgs field value at…
In previous publications we have proposed that Inflation can be realized in a second minimum of the Standard Model Higgs potential at energy scales of about $10^{16}$ GeV, if the minimum is not too deep and if a mechanism which allows a…
We revisit the decoupling effects associated with heavy particles in the renormalization group running of the vacuum energy in a mass-dependent renormalization scheme. We find the running of the vacuum energy stemming from the Higgs…
We consider a single scalar field inflation model with Higgs potential and curvature corrections given by non-minimal derivative coupling to gravity and coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Exact analytical expressions, within the…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations are used to constrain reheating to Standard Model (SM) particles after a period of inflation. As a light spectator field, the SM Higgs boson acquires large field values from its quantum…
In the case of a metastable electroweak vacuum the quantum corrected effective potential plays a crucial role in the potential instability of the Standard Model. In the Early Universe, in particular during inflation and reheating, this…
Using a physical renormalisation scheme we derive mass-dependent renormalisation group equations for the running of the Higgs quartic coupling within the Standard Model. Subsequently, we accurately take into account weak scale thresholds,…
We perform a phenomenological analysis of the observable consequences on the extended scalar sector of the SMASH (Standard Model - Axion - Seesaw - Higgs portal inflation) framework. We solve the vacuum metastability problem in a suitable…
The refined de Sitter (dS) conjecture provides two consistency conditions for an effective theory potential of a quantum gravity theory. Any inflationary model can be checked by these conditions and minimal gauge inflation is not an…
We consider the effect of a period of inflation with a high energy density upon the stability of the Higgs potential in the early universe. The recent measurement of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r_T \sim 0.16$, by the BICEP-2 experiment…
Recent measurements at the LHC suggest that the current Higgs vacuum could be metastable with a modest barrier (height 10^{10-12}{GeV})^{4}) separating it from a ground state with negative vacuum density of order the Planck scale. We note…
Scalar field models of inflation based on a large nonminimal coupling to gravity xi, in particular, Higgs inflation, may violate unitarity at an energy scale ~ M_p / xi << M_p. In this case the model is incomplete at energy scales relevant…
A hierarchically small weak scale does not generally coincide with enhanced symmetry, but it may still be exceptional with respect to vacuum energy. By analyzing the classical vacuum energy as a function of parameters such as the Higgs…
The effective potential of the Higgs scalar field in the Standard Model may have a second degenerate minimum at an ultrahigh vacuum expectation value. This second minimum then determines, by radiative corrections, the values of the…
We study inflation for a quantum scalar electrodynamics model in curved space-time and for higher-derivative quantum gravity (QG) coupled with scalar electrodynamics. The corresponding renormalization-group (RG) improved potential is…
For a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs boson masses, the Standard Model Higgs potential develops a false minimum at energies of about $10^{16}$ GeV, where primordial Inflation could have started in a cold metastable state. A…
In this paper we investigate the vacuum stability of the non-minimally coupled Standard-Model Higgs during a phase of kinetic domination following the end of inflation. The non-minimal coupling to curvature stabilises the Higgs fluctuations…