Higgs-curvature coupling and post-inflationary vacuum instability

Abstract

We study the post-inflationary dynamics of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs field in the presence of a non-minimal coupling $\xi |\Phi {|}^{2}R$ to gravity, both with and without the electroweak gauge fields coupled to the Higgs. We assume a minimal scenario in which inflation and reheating are caused by chaotic inflation with a quadratic potential, and no additional new physics is relevant below the Planck scale. By using classical real-time lattice simulations with a renormalisation group improved effective Higgs potential and by demanding the stability of the Higgs vacuum after inflation, we obtain upper bounds for $\xi$, taking into account the experimental uncertainty of the top-Yukawa coupling. We compare the bounds in the absence and presence of the electroweak gauge bosons, and conclude that the addition of gauge interactions has a rather minimal impact. In the unstable cases, we parametrize the time when such instability develops. For a top-quark mass $m_t\approx 173.3\mathrm{GeV}$, the Higgs vacuum instability is triggered for $\xi \gtrsim 4-5$, although a slightly lower mass of $m_t\approx 172.1\mathrm{GeV}$ pushes up this limit to $\xi \gtrsim 11-12$. This, together with the estimation $\xi \gtrsim 0.06$ for stability during inflation, provides tight constraints to the Higgs-curvature coupling within the SM.

15 pages, 13 figures. Minor changes to match version published in PRD

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