Classical and quantum initial conditions for Higgs inflation

2015/06/30 by Alberto Salvio, Anupam Mazumdar · 149 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Einstein #Higgs boson #Higgs field #Homogeneity (statistics) #Inflation (cosmology) #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum #Quantum gravity #Quantum mechanics #Renormalization #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2015.09.020

published in Physics Letters B 750, 194-200 (Elsevier BV) · 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: some wording changed and references added

arxiv created 2015/07/02 · openalex publication_date 2015/09/12 · arxiv updated 2016/02/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We investigate whether Higgs inflation can occur in the Standard Model starting from natural initial conditions or not. The Higgs has a non-minimal coupling to the Ricci scalar. We confine our attention to the regime where quantum Einstein gravity effects are small in order to have results that are independent of the ultraviolet completion of gravity. At the classical level we find no tuning is required to have successful Higgs inflation, provided the initial homogeneity condition is satisfied. On the other hand, at the quantum level we obtain that the renormalization for large non-minimal coupling requires an additional degree of freedom, unless a tuning of the initial values of the running parameters is made. In order to see that this effect may change the predictions we finally include such degree of freedom in the field content and show that Starobinsky's R2 inflation dominates over Higgs inflation.

Citations

• When Higgs Meets Starobinsky in the Early Universe
• Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC
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• Inflationary Theory and Alternative Cosmology
• Higgs inflation at NNLO after the boson discovery
• The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton
• Standard Model Higgs boson mass from inflation
• Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC
• Planck 2015 results
• Assisted inflation

Cited by

• Higgs Field in Cosmology
• Higgs Starobinsky inflation
• Axion–Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter
• Minimal Higgs inflation with an R2 term in Palatini gravity
• Enhancement of primordial curvature perturbations in R³-corrected Starobinsky-Higgs inflation
• Independent connection in ACTion during inflation