Higgs field in cosmology

Abstract

The accelerated expansion of the early universe is an integral part of modern cosmology and dynamically realized by the mechanism of inflation. The simplest theoretical description of the inflationary paradigm is based on the assumption of an additional propagating scalar degree of freedom which drives inflation - the inflaton. In most models of inflation the fundamental nature of the inflaton remains unexplained. In the model of Higgs inflation, the inflaton is identified with the Standard Model Higgs boson and connects cosmology with elementary particle physics. A characteristic feature of this model is a non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to gravity. I review and discuss several phenomenological and fundamental aspects of this model, including the impact of quantum corrections and the renormalization group, the derivation of initial conditions for Higgs inflation in a quantum cosmological framework and the classical and quantum equivalence of different field parametrizations.

36 pages, 9 figures; references added, typos corrected. Invited contribution to the Heraeus-Seminar "Hundred Years of Gauge Theory", 30 July - 3 August 2018, Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, organized by Silvia De Bianchi and Claus Kiefer. To appear in the proceedings "100 Years of Gauge Theory. Past, present and future perspectives" in the series `Fundamental Theories of Physics' (Springer)

References in corpus (31)

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• Power-counting and the Validity of the Classical Approximation During Inflation
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• On gravitational and thermal corrections to vacuum decay
• (Higgs) vacuum decay during inflation
• Higgs Mass Bounds from Renormalization Flow for a Higgs-top-bottom model
• Frame Covariant Nonminimal Multifield Inflation
• Dynamical Emergence of Scalaron in Higgs Inflation
• Quantum scale symmetry
• Frame Covariance in Quantum Gravity
• Higgs-$R^2$ inflation -- full slow-roll study at tree-level
• Geometrized quantum Galileons
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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Reheating in $R^2$ Palatini inflationary models
• Scalaron-Higgs inflation reloaded: Higgs-dependent scalaron mass and primordial black hole dark matter
• The Higgs field and early universe cosmology: a (brief) review
• Discrepancy between cosmological and electroweak observables in Higgs Inflation
• Towards a unitary, renormalizable and ultraviolet-complete quantum theory of gravity
• Quantum Higgs Inflation
• Multi-field inflation from single-field models
• Testing time-delayed cosmology
• Modified Starobinsky inflation by the $R\ln \left(\square \right)R$ term
• The Effective Potential Originating from Swampland and the Non-trivial Brans-Dicke Coupling
• Fermionic wave functions and Grassmann fields as possible sources of dark energy
• Conflict between some higher-order curvature invariant terms