We investigate the dynamics of the Standard Model higgs with a minimal coupling to gravity during and after inflation. In the regime where the Standard Model vacuum is stable, we find that the higgs becomes a light spectator field after about 30 efolds of inflation, irrespectively of its initial value. Once the higgs has become light, its root-mean-square value h_* relaxes to equilibrium in about 85 efolds for the inflationary scale of H_*=10^4 GeV and in 20 efolds for H_*=10^10 GeV. The equilibrium value is given by h_*~0.36 lambda^{-1/4}H_*, where lambda=0.09 ... 0.0005 is the higgs self coupling at the scales H_*=10^4 ... 10^10 GeV. We show that the main decay channel of the higgs condensate after inflation is the resonant production of Standard Model gauge bosons. For a set of parameters we find that a significant part of the condensate has decayed in between 340 and 630 Hubble times after the onset of higgs oscillations, depending on H_* in a non-trivial way. The higgs perturbations correspond to isocurvature modes during inflation but they could generate significant adiabatic perturbations at a later stage for example through a modulation of the reheating stage. However, this requires that the inflaton(s) decay no later than a few hundred Hubble times after the onset of higgs oscillations.
We calculate the baryon asymmetry value generated in the Scalar Field Condensate (SCF) baryogenesis model obtained in several inflationary scenarios and different reheating models. We provide analysis of the baryon asymmetry value obtained for more than 70 sets of parameters of the SCF model and the following inflationary scenarios, namely: new inflation, chaotic inflation, Starobinsky inflation, MSSM inflation, quintessential inflation. We considered both cases of efficient thermalization after inflation and also delayed thermalization. We have found that SFC baryogenesis model produces baryo…
We show that the Higgs portal interactions involving extra dark Higgs field can save generically the original Higgs inflation of the standard model (SM) from the problem of a deep non-SM vacuum in the SM Higgs potential. Specifically, we show that such interactions disconnect the top quark pole mass from inflationary observables and allow multi-dimensional parameter space to save the Higgs inflation, thanks to the additional parameters (the dark Higgs boson mass $m_ϕ$, the mixing angle $α$ between the SM Higgs $H$ and dark Higgs $Φ$, and the mixed quartic coupling) affecting RG-running of the …
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 significant kinetic mixing between the inflaton and the graviton such that perturbative unitarity is restored up to Planck scale. We show the correlation between unitarity scale and inflationary observables in this model and discuss how the effective Higgs inflation appears.
We discuss the inflationary dynamics of a system with a non-minimal coupling between the Higgs and the Ricci scalar as well as a Ricci scalar squared term. There are two scalar modes in this system, i.e. the Higgs and the spin-zero mode of the graviton, or the scalaron. We study the two-field dynamics of the Higgs and the scalaron during inflation, and clarify the condition where inflation is dominated by the Higgs/scalaron. We also find that the cut-off scale at around the vacuum is as large as the Planck scale, and hence there is no unitarity issue, although there is a constraint on the coup…
We study the Higgs inflation model realized in the supersymmetric SU(5) grand unified theory (GUT), focusing on its multifield dynamics and prediction of cosmological observables. The requirement for GUT symmetry breaking during inflation imposes tight constraints on the model parameters. We find, nevertheless, with an appropriately chosen noncanonical Kahler potential the model is in excellent agreement with the present cosmological observation. The effects from multifield dynamics is found to be minor and thus, unlike other similar supersymmetric implementation of nonminimally coupled Higgs …
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 $ξ$ of the Higgs field. Such a coupling is required by renormalisation of the Standard Model in curved space, and in the current scenario also by vacuum stability during high-scale inflation. We find that for $ξ\gtrsim 1$, rapidly changing spacetime curvature at the end of inflation leads to significant production of Higgs particles, potentially triggering a transition to a negative-energ…
We investigate the dependency of Higgs inflation on the non-renormalisable matching between the low energy Standard Model limit and the inflationary regime at high energies. We show that for the top mass range $m_t \gtrsim 171.8$ GeV the scenario robustly predicts the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.97$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r\simeq 0.003$. The matching is however non-trivial, even the best-fit values $m_h=125.09$ GeV and $m_t=173.21$ GeV require a jump $δλ\sim 0.01$ in the Higgs coupling below the inflationary scale. For $m_t\lesssim 171.8$ GeV, the matching may generate a feature in t…
The predictions of Standard Model Higgs inflation are in excellent agreement with the Planck data, without the need for new fields. However, consistency of the theory requires the presence of (unknown) threshold corrections. These modify the running of the couplings, and thereby change the shape of the inflationary potential. This raises the question how sensitive the CMB parameters are to the UV completion. We show that, due to a precise cancellation, the inflationary predictions are almost unaffected. This implies in general that one cannot relate the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar rati…
We analyse Starobinsky inflation in the presence of the Brout Englert Higgs (BEH) boson with a non-minimal coupling to the Ricci scalar, $R$. The latter induces a coupling of the massive scaleron associated with the $R^2$ term to the BEH boson and this leads to a radiative correction to the BEH mass that must be fine tuned to keep the scalar light. For the case of $R^2$ driven inflation this requires a high level of fine tuning of order 1 part in $10^{8}$; for the case of Higgs inflation it is very much greater. We consider a scale invariant extension of the $R^2$/Higgs model and find that for…
Cosmological implications of Higgs field fluctuations during inflation are considered. This study is based on the Standard Model and the standard quadratic model of chaotic inflation where the Higgs field is minimally coupled to gravity and has no direct coupling to the inflaton. In the Standard model the renormalisation group improved effective potential develops an instability (an additional minimum and maximum) at large field values. It is shown that such a new maximum should take place at an energy scale above $10^{14} \;\text{GeV},$ otherwise a universe like ours is extremely unlikely. Th…
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 compatible with the present CMB observational constraints on inflation, and also with primordial black hole production accounting for the totality or a fraction of the observed dark matter. We study the model taking into account the NNLO corrections to the Higgs effective potential: such corrections are extremely important to reduce the theoretical error assoc…
An epoch of Higgs relaxation may occur in the early universe during or immediately following postinflationary reheating. It has recently been pointed out that leptogenesis may occur in minimal extensions of the Standard Model during this epoch. We analyse Higgs relaxation taking into account the effects of perturbative and non-perturbative decays of the Higgs condensate, and we present a detailed derivation of the relevant kinetic equations and of the relevant particle interaction cross sections. We identify the parameter space in which a sufficiently large asymmetry is generated.
Current measurements of the Higgs boson mass and top Yukawa coupling suggest that the effective Higgs potential develops an instability below the Planck scale. If the energy scale of inflation is as high as the GUT scale, inflationary quantum fluctuations of the Higgs field can easily destabilize the standard electroweak vacuum and produce a lot of AdS domains. This destabilization during inflation can be avoided if a relatively large nonminimal Higgs-gravity or inflaton-Higgs coupling is introduced. Such couplings generate a large effective mass term for the Higgs, which can raise the effecti…
The Standard Model Higgs becomes tachyonic at high energy scales according to current measurements. This unstable regime of the Higgs potential can be realized in the early Universe during high scale inflation, potentially with catastrophic consequences. This letter highlights a crucial inherent feature of such configurations that has so far remained ignored: Higgs particle production out of vacuum induced by the rapidly evolving Higgs field, which gets exponentially enhanced due to the tachyonic instability. Such explosive particle production can rapidly drain energy away from the Higgs field…
We propose a realization of cosmic inflation with the Higgs field when the Higgs potential has degenerate vacua by employing the recently proposed idea of hillclimbing inflation. The resultant inflationary predictions exhibit a sizable deviation from those of the ordinary Higgs inflation.
We show that the dynamics of the Higgs field during inflation is not affected by metric fluctuations if the Higgs is an energetically subdominant light spectator. For Standard Model parameters we find that couplings between Higgs and metric fluctuations are suppressed by $\mathcal{O}(10^{-7})$. They are negligible compared to both pure Higgs terms in the effective potential and the unavoidable non-minimal Higgs coupling to background scalar curvature. The question of the electroweak vacuum instability during high energy scale inflation can therefore be studied consistently using the Jordan fra…
We point out that cosmological constraint from the axion isocurvature perturbation is relaxed if the Higgs field obtains a large field value during inflation in the DFSZ axion model. This scenario is consistent with the Higgs inflation model, in which two Higgs doublets have non-minimal couplings and play a role of inflaton.
It is known that the Higgs potential in the Standard Model can drive a successful inflation as long as the Higgs field couples non-minimally to gravity. It is then inevitable to take into account the loop corrections of the Standard Model particles to the Higgs potential in the Higgs inflation. In this paper, we discuss the one-loop corrections at finite temperature to the curvature perturbation generated during the Higgs inflation. We find that the thermal loop effects can suppress the power of the curvature perturbation at large scales, thus resulting in a low quadrupole of the temperature a…
We study $R^2$-Higgs inflation in a model with two Higgs doublets in which the Higgs sector of the Standard Model is extended by an additional Higgs doublet, thereby four scalar fields are involved in the inflationary evolutions. We first derive the set of equations required to follow the inflationary dynamics in this two Higgs doublet model, allowing a nonminimal coupling between the Higgs-squared and the Ricci scalar $R$, as well as the $R^2$ term in the covariant formalism. By numerically solving the system of equations, we find that, in parameter space where a successful $R^2$-Higgs inflat…
In this article, we intend to find a specific model which can satisfy the further refining dS swampland conjecture and scalar weak gravity conjecture (SWGC) simultaneously, in particular, Higgs inflation model and its two extensions: Higgs-Dilaton model and Palatini Higgs inflation. We find that although Higgs inflation model and Higgs-Dilaton model could satisfy the further refining dS swampland conjecture, the two models cannot satisfy SWGC and its strong version. While Palatini Higgs inflation could satisfy these conjectures simultaneously. Therefore Palatini Higgs inflation could be a "rea…
We study a Higgs inflation model with a running kinetic term, taking account of the renormalization group evolution of relevant coupling constants. Specifically we study two types of the running kinetic Higgs inflation, where the inflaton potential is given by the quadratic or linear term potential in a frame where the Higgs field is canonically normalized. We solve the renormalization group equations at two-loop level and calculate the scalar spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio. We find that, even if the renormalization group effects are included, the quadratic inflation is ruled ou…
We show that introducing $R^2$-term makes the Higgs-inflation and Higgs-dilaton inflation consistent models: the strong coupling energy scales in scalar, gauge and gravity sectors all are lifted up to the Planck scale.
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 criticality is required by the occurrence of an eternal topological inflation induced by the Higgs potential. The role of this inflation is to continuously create sufficiently flat and homogeneous Universe, providing the necessary initial condition for the subsequent slow-roll inflation that generates the density perturbations of the right magnitude. While the c…
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 value of the top mass of Tevatron and LHC measurements. This Higgs inflation scenario predicts about a 1 TeV scalar dark matter and an $\mathcal{O}(10^{14})$ GeV right-handed neutrino by use of 125.6 GeV Higgs mass, 173.34 GeV top mass, and a nonminimal gravity coupling $ξ\simeq10.1$. This inflation model is consistent with the recent result of the tensor-to-sc…
We revisit the small field Coleman-Weinberg (CW) inflation, which has the following two problems. First, the smallness of the slow roll parameter $ε$ requires the inflation scale to be very low. Second, the spectral index $n_s \approx1+2 η$ tends to become smaller compared to the observed value. In this letter, we consider two possible effects on the dynamics of inflation: radiatively generated non-minimal coupling to gravity $ξϕ^2 {\cal R}$ and condensation of fermions coupled to the inflaton as $ϕ\barψψ$. We show that the fermion condenate can solve the above problems.
Recent LHC data provides precise values of coupling constants of the Higgs field, however, these measurements do not determine its coupling with gravity. We explore this freedom to see whether Higgs field non-minimally coupled to Gauss-Bonnet term in 4-dimensions can lead to inflation generating the observed density fluctuations. We obtain analytical solution for this model and that the exit of inflation (with a finite number of e-folding) demands that the energy scale of inflation is close to Electro-weak scale. We compare the scalar and tensor power spectrum of our model with PLANCK data and…
It is shown whether Higgs inflation can be saved with high-scale supersymmetry critically depends on the magnitude of non-minimal coupling constant $ξ$. For small $ξ\leq 500$, the threshold correction at scale $M_{P}/ξ$ is constrained in high precision.Its magnitude is in the narrow range of $(-0.03, -0.02)$ and $(-0.05, -0.04)$ for the wino and higgsino/singlino dark matter, respectively. While in the large $ξ$-region with $ξ\geq 10^{4}$, such high-scale supersymmetry is excluded by too large threshold correction as required by Higgs inflation.
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 regime. The discovery of a fundamental scalar in the LHC provides the less speculative candidate. Could the Higgs field itself be responsible for inflation? Do we really need to advocate new physics to explain the properties of the Universe at large scales? Which is the relation between the Standard Model parameters and the inflationary observables? What ha…
We examine renormalization of Higgs inflation in the context of the full Standard Model. In the fermionic sector of the theory there is a parametrically large top-Goldstone coupling which prevents renormalization of the theory. Using a simplified model with a global U(1) symmetry, a Higgs and a fermion, we show that the one-loop contribution to 4-Goldstone scattering cannot be absorbed in any tree level terms, and hence forbids a consistent renormalization of the theory. Our results apply for large non-minimal Higgs-gravity coupling in the large field regime, and indicate that Higgs inflation …
We study the cosmological consequences of higher-dimensional operators respecting the asymptotic symmetries of the tree-level Higgs inflation action. The main contribution of these operators to the renormalization group enhanced potential is localized in a compact field range, whose upper limit is close to the end of inflation. The spectrum of primordial fluctuations in the so-called universal regime turns out to be almost insensitive to radiative corrections and in excellent agreement with the present cosmological data. However, higher-dimensional operators can play an important role in criti…
In new Higgs inflation the Higgs kinetic terms are non-minimally coupled to the Einstein tensor, allowing the Higgs field to play the role of the inflaton. The new interaction is non-renormalizable, and the model only describes physics below some cutoff scale. Even if the unknown UV physics does not affect the tree level inflaton potential significantly, it may still enter at loop level and modify the running of the Standard Model (SM) parameters. This is analogous to what happens in the original model for Higgs inflation. A key difference, though, is that in new Higgs inflation the inflationa…
