Non-Minimal Coupling of the Higgs Boson to Curvature in an Inflationary Universe

Abstract

In the absence of new physics around $10^{10}$ GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult to understand how the Higgs vacuum would not decay to the true lower vacuum of the theory with catastrophic consequences if inflation took place at a scale above $10^{10}$ GeV. In this paper we show that the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to curvature could solve this problem by generating a direct coupling of the Higgs boson to the inflationary potential thereby stabilizing the electroweak vacuum. For specific values of the Higgs field initial condition and of its non-minimal coupling, inflation can drive the Higgs field to the electroweak vacuum quickly during inflation.

11 pages

References in corpus (5)

• The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton
• Cosmological implications of the Higgs mass measurement
• Spacetime curvature and the Higgs stability during inflation
• The lifetime of the electroweak vacuum and sensitivity to Planck scale physics
• Anisotropic singularities in modified gravity models

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Cosmological Aspects of Higgs Vacuum Metastability
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• Two-loop corrections to Starobinsky-Higgs inflation
• Neutron Star Structure in the Presence of Nonminimally Coupled Scalar Fields
• Gravitational corrections to Higgs potentials
• Quantum Hair During Gravitational Collapse
• Can dark matter drive electroweak symmetry breaking?
• Mimetic gravity: mimicking the dynamics of the primeval universe in the context of loop quantum cosmology
• Generalised matter couplings in general relativity
• Effects of Curvature-Scalar Coupling on Vacuum Energy in Flat (3+1)-Dimensional Space-Time