Related papers: A Dynamical Weak Scale from Inflation
We highlight a new connection between the Standard Model hierarchy problem and the dark matter sector. The key piece is the relaxion field, which besides scanning the Higgs mass and setting the electroweak scale, also constitutes the…
We investigate inflationary Higgs dynamics and constraints on the Standard Model parameters assuming the Higgs potential, computed to next-to-next leading order precision, is not significantly affected by new physics. For a high…
The abundance of the QCD axion is known to be suppressed if the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is lower than the QCD scale, and if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We show that the tight upper bound on the inflation…
Why the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ observed today is so much smaller than the Planck scale or why the universe is accelerating at present? This is so-called the cosmological constant fine-tuning problem. In this paper, we find that…
The recent measurement of the Higgs boson mass implies a relatively slow rise of the Standard Model Higgs potential at large scales, and a possible second minimum at even larger scales. Consequently, the Higgs field may develop a large…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
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…
We investigate the dynamics of the Higgs field at the end of inflation in the minimal scenario consisting of an inflaton field coupled to the Standard Model only through the non-minimal gravitational coupling $\xi$ of the Higgs field. Such…
We examine the low energy phenomenology of the relaxion solution to the weak scale hierarchy problem. Assuming that the Hubble friction is responsible for a dissipation of the relaxion energy, we identify the cosmological relaxion window…
According to the current experimental data, the Higgs vacuum appears to be metastable due to the development of a second lower ground state in its potential. Consequently, vacuum decay would induce the nucleation of true vacuum bubbles with…
Our current measurements of the Standard Model parameters imply that the Higgs field resides in a metastable electroweak vacuum, where the vacuum can decay to a lower ground state, with cataclysmic repercussions for our Universe. According…
We present a cosmological solution to the electroweak hierarchy problem. After discussing general features of cosmological approaches to naturalness, we extend the Standard Model with two light scalars very weakly coupled to the Higgs and…
A new class of solutions to the electroweak hierarchy problem is presented that does not require either weak scale dynamics or anthropics. Dynamical evolution during the early universe drives the Higgs mass to a value much smaller than the…
We introduce a new approach to the Higgs naturalness problem, where the value of the Higgs mass is tied to cosmic stability and the possibility of a large observable Universe. The Higgs mixes with the dilaton of a CFT sector whose true…
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 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…
We develop the formalism for computing gravitational corrections to vacuum decay from de Sitter space as a sub-Planckian perturbative expansion. Non-minimal coupling to gravity can be encoded in an effective potential. The Coleman bounce…
A special class of conformal gravity theories is proposed to solve the long standing problem of the fine-tuned cosmological constant. In the proposed model time evolution of the inflaton field leaves behind a nearly vanishing, but finite…
We show that relaxion, that addresses the hierarchy problem, can account for the observed dark matter (DM) relic density. The setup is similar to the case of axion DM models topped with a dynamical misalignment mechanism. After the…
A new scalar-tensor theory of gravity induced by dynamically broken scale invariance is proposed, and its cosmological implications are discussed. It is found that the model admits an inflation via the Hawking-Moss bubbling, but the…