Related papers: Electroweak Vacuum Stability in light of BICEP2
For a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs boson masses, the Standard Model Higgs potential develops a shallow local minimum at energies of about $10^{16}$ GeV, where primordial inflation could have started in a cold metastable…
The present measurement of the standard model (SM) parameters suggests that the Higgs effective potential has a maximum at the intermediate scale, and the electroweak (EW) vacuum is not absolutely stable. The simplest possibility for…
In the Standard Model (SM), the Higgs mass around 125 GeV implies that the electroweak vacuum is metastable since the quartic Higgs coupling turns negative at high energies. I point out that a tiny mixing of the Higgs with a heavy singlet…
We have recently suggested [1,2] that Inflation could have started in a local minimum of the Higgs potential at field values of about $10^{15}-10^{17}$ GeV, which exists for a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs masses and thus…
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…
We show that the Standard Model vacuum can be stabilized if all particle propagators are non-minimally coupled to gravity. This is due to a Higgs-background dependent redefinition of the Standard Model fields: in terms of canonical…
It is known that the present electroweak vacuum is likely to be metastable and it may lead to a serious instability during/after inflation. We propose a simple solution to the problem of vacuum instability during/after inflation. If there…
The measured values of the Higgs and top quark masses imply that the Standard Model potential is very likely to be unstable at large Higgs values. This is particularly problematic during inflation, which sources large perturbations of the…
Even if nothing but a light Higgs is observed at the LHC, suggesting that the Standard Model is unmodified up to scales far above the weak scale, Higgs physics can yield surprises of fundamental significance for cosmology. As has long been…
For the central values of the relevant experimental inputs, that is the strong coupling constant and the top quark and Higgs masses, the effective Higgs potential displays two minima, one at the electroweak scale and a deeper one at high…
We study Coleman-De Luccia tunneling of the Standard Model Higgs field during inflation in the case when the electroweak vacuum is metastable. We verify that the tunneling rate is exponentially suppressed. The main contribution to the…
If the Higgs boson has a mass below 130 GeV, then the standard model vacuum is unstable; if it has a mass below 90 GeV (i.e. within reach of LEP within the next two years), then the instability will occur at a scale between 800 GeV and 10…
We study the dynamics of the standard model Higgs field in the inflationary cosmology. Since metastability of our vacuum is indicated by the current experimental data of the Higgs boson and top quark, inflation models with a large Hubble…
The issue of electroweak vacuum stability is studied in presence of a scalar field which participates in modifying the minimal chaotic inflation model. It is shown that the threshold effect on the Higgs quartic coupling originating from the…
In the absence of new physics around $10^{10}$ GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult…
BICEP2 observations, interpreted most simply, suggest an era of inflation with energy densities of order ($10^{16}\, {\rm GeV})^4$, not far below the Planck density. However, models of TeV gravity with large extra dimensions might allow a…
Inflation is nowadays a well-established paradigm consistent with all the observations. The precise nature of the inflaton is however unknown and its role could be played by any candidate able to imitate a scalar condensate in the slow-roll…
We discuss the Higgs inflation scenario with singlet scalar dark matter and a right-handed neutrino. The singlet scalar and the right-handed neutrino play crucial roles for realizing a suitable plateau of Higgs potential with the center…
We present a new solution to the hierarchy problem, where the Higgs mass is at its observed electroweak value because such a patch inflates the most in the early universe. If the Higgs mass depends on a field undergoing quantum fluctuations…
The measured masses of the Higgs boson and top quark indicate that the effective potential of the standard model either develops an unstable electroweak vacuum or stands stable all the way up to the Planck scale. In the latter case in which…