Asymptotic freedom in inflationary cosmology with a non-minimally coupled Higgs field

2009/04/30 by A. O. Barvinsky, A. Yu. Kamenshchik, C. Kiefer +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ph #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2009/12/003

published as JCAP 0912:003,2009 · CMB bounds on the Higgs mass are quantitatively and qualitatively changed due to the effect of Goldstone modes, omitted in the first version; the discussion of gauge and parametrization dependence of the results is added

Abstract

We consider the renormalization group improvement in the theory of the Standard Model Higgs boson playing the role of an inflaton with a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. It suggests the range of the Higgs mass 135.6 \rm GeV \lesssim M_H\lesssim 184.5 \rm GeV compatible with the current CMB data (the lower WMAP bound on n_s), which is close to the widely accepted range dictated by the electroweak vacuum stability and perturbation theory bounds. We find the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom induced by this non-minimal curvature coupling, which brings the theory to the weak coupling domain everywhere except at the lower and upper boundary of this range. The renormalization group running of the basic quantity \boldmath A_I -- the anomalous scaling in the non-minimally coupled Standard Model, which analytically determines all characteristics of the CMB spectrum -- brings \boldmath A_I to small negative values at the inflation scale. This property is crucial for the above results and may also underlie the formation of initial conditions for the inflationary dynamics in quantum cosmology.

Cited by

• Higgs boson, renormalization group, and naturalness in cosmology

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• Higgs Inflation Model with Small Non-Minimal Coupling Constant
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