Related papers: On electroweak metastability and Higgs inflation
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…
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 propose a novel possibility for Higgs inflation where the perturbative unitarity below the Planck scale is ensured by construction and the successful predictions for inflation are accommodated. The conformal gravity coupling for the…
Current Higgs boson and top quark data favor metastability of our vacuum which raises questions as to why the Universe has chosen an energetically disfavored state and remained there during inflation. In this Letter, we point out that these…
The measured values of the Higgs and top masses and of the strong gauge coupling constant point to the near-criticality of the Standard Model, where two vacua at the electroweak and Planck scales are quasi-degenerate. We argue that the…
We consider critical Higgs inflation, namely Higgs inflation with a rising inflection point at smaller field values than those of the plateau induced by the non-minimal coupling to gravity. It has been proposed that such configuration is…
Higgs inflation can occur if the Standard Model (SM) is a self-consistent effective field theory up to inflationary scale. This leads to a lower bound on the Higgs boson mass, $M_h \geq M_{\text{crit}}$. If $M_h$ is more than a few hundreds…
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…
Current measurements of Standard Model parameters suggest that the electroweak vacuum is metastable. This metastability has important cosmological implications, because large fluctuations in the Higgs field could trigger vacuum decay in 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…
Recent analysis shows that if the 125-126 GeV LHC resonance turns out to be the Standard Model Higgs boson, the electroweak vacuum would be a metastable state at 98% C.L. In this paper we argue that, during inflation, the electroweak vacuum…
In the Standard Model, the Higgs potential develops an instability at high field values when the quartic self-coupling runs negative. Large quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation could drive the Higgs field beyond the potential…
We derive one- and two-loop renormalization group equations (RGEs) of Higgs-$R^2$ inflation. This model has a non-minimal coupling between the Higgs and the Ricci scalar and a Ricci scalar squared term on top of the standard model. The RGEs…
We introduce a new method that allows for the Higgs to be the inflaton. That is, we let the Higgs be a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone (pNG) boson of a global coset symmetry $G/H$ that spontaneously breaks at an energy scale $\sim 4\pi f$ and give…
Our electroweak vacuum may be metastable in light of the current experimental data of the Higgs/top quark mass. If this is really the case, high-scale inflation models require a stabilization mechanism of our vacuum during inflation. A…
We propose a modification to the standard hybrid inflation model \cite{Linde:1993cn}, that connects a successful hybrid inflation scenario to the standard model Higgs sector, via the electroweak vacuum stability. The proposed model results…
We consider the extension of the Standard Model (SM) with a light inflaton where both unitarity problem in Higgs inflation and vacuum instability problem are resolved. The linear non-minimal coupling of the inflaton to gravity leads to a…
Apparent metastability of the electroweak vacuum poses a number of cosmological questions. These concern evolution of the Higgs field to the current vacuum, and its stability during and after inflation. Higgs-inflaton and non-minimal…
We present a model of inflation in a supergravity framework in the Einstein frame where the Higgs field of the next to minimal supersymmetric standard model (NMSSM) plays the role of the inflaton. Previous attempts which assumed non-minimal…
It is a longstanding desire of cosmologists, and particle physicists as well, to connect inflation to low energy physics, culminating, for instance, in what is known as Higgs inflation. The condition for the standard Higgs boson playing the…