6533b7d4fe1ef96bd12635d2
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Postinationary vacuum instability and Higgs-inflaton couplings
Kari EnqvistMindaugas KarciauskasOleg LebedevStanislav RusakMarco Zattasubject
General Relativity and Quantum CosmologyHiggs-inflation couplingsHigh Energy Physics::LatticeHigh Energy Physics::PhenomenologyHigh Energy Physics::ExperimentAstrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysicsdescription
The Higgs-inflaton coupling plays an important role in the Higgs field dynamics in the early Universe. Even a tiny coupling generated at loop level can have a dramatic effect on the fate of the electroweak vacuum. Such Higgs-inflaton interaction is present both at the trilinear and quartic levels in realistic reheating models. In this work, we examine the Higgs dynamics during the preheating epoch, focusing on the effects of the parametric and tachyonic resonances. We use lattice simulations and other numerical tools in our studies. We find that the resonances can induce large fluctuations of the Higgs field which destabilize the electroweak vacuum. Our considerations thus provide an upper bound on quartic and trilinear interactions between the Higgs and the inflaton. We conclude that there exists a favorable range of the couplings within which the Higgs field is stabilized during both inflation and preheating epochs. peerReviewed
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-01-01 |