The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton

Abstract

We argue that the Higgs boson of the Standard Model can lead to inflation and produce cosmological perturbations in accordance with observations. An essential requirement is the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs scalar field to gravity; no new particle besides already present in the electroweak theory is required.

5 pages, 2 figures. Journal version -- discussion added and typos corrected

References in corpus (2)

• Effective Action, Conformal Anomaly and the Issue of Quadratic Divergences
• Is there a new physics between electroweak and Planck scales?

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Inflation with Non-Minimal Coupling: Metric vs. Palatini Formulations
• Effective Action of Vacuum: Semiclassical Approach
• Higgsflation at the GUT scale in a Higgsless Universe