Related papers: Higgs inflation and vacuum stability
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
This note makes a self-contained exposition of the basic facts of big bang cosmology as they relate to inflation. The fundamental problems with that model are then explored. A quartic scalar potential model of inflation is evaluated which…
The properties of the recently discovered Higgs boson together with the absence of new physics at collider experiments allows us to speculate about consistently extending the Standard Model of particle physics all the way up to the Planck…
We investigate the possibility of using the only known fundamental scalar, the Higgs, as an inflaton with minimal coupling to gravity. The peculiar appearance of a plateau or a false vacuum in the renormalised effective scalar potential…
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…
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…
We study the inflationary evolution of a scalar field $h$ with an unstable potential for the case where the Hubble parameter $H$ during inflation is larger than the instability scale $\Lambda_I$ of the potential. Quantum fluctuations in the…
We consider the introduction of a complex scalar field carrying a global lepton number charge to the Standard Model and the Higgs inflation framework. The conditions are investigated under which this model can simultaneously ensure Higgs…
The measured Standard Model parameters lie in a range such that the Higgs potential, once extrapolated up to high scales, develops a minimum of negative energy density. This has important cosmological implications. In particular, during…
We analyse the self-consistency of inflation in the Standard Model, where the Higgs field has a large non-minimal coupling to gravity. We determine the domain of energies in which this model represents a valid effective field theory as a…
Within the Standard Model, the current Higgs and top quark data favor metastability of the electroweak vacuum, although the uncertainties are still significant. The true vacuum is many orders of magnitude deeper than ours and the barrier…
The Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable at large field values. After clarifying the issue of gauge dependence of the effective potential, we study the cosmological evolution of the Higgs field in presence of this instability…
The accelerated expansion of the early universe is an integral part of modern cosmology and dynamically realized by the mechanism of inflation. The simplest theoretical description of the inflationary paradigm is based on the assumption of…
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…
If the recent detection of $B-$mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background by BICEP2 observations, withstand the test of time after the release of recent PLANCK dust polarisation data, then it would surprisingly put the…
A remarkable prediction of the Standard Model is that, in the absence of corrections lifting the energy density, the Higgs potential becomes negative at large field values. If the Higgs field samples this part of the potential during…
We review experimental and theoretical developments in inflation and its application to structure formation, including the curvaton idea. We then discuss a particle physics model of supersymmetric hybrid inflation at the intermediate scale…
Measurements of the Higgs boson and top quark masses indicate that the Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable around $\Lambda_I \sim 10^{11}$ GeV. This instability is cosmologically relevant since quantum fluctuations during…
We investigate the role of the Higgs field as a fundamental scalar in the Standard Model within the framework of modular inflation models, where a modulus field acts as the inflaton and its interactions are governed by an underlying modular…
We study the stability of the electroweak vacuum in low-scale inflation models whose Hubble parameter is much smaller than the instability scale of the Higgs potential. In general, couplings between the inflaton and Higgs are present, and…