2017/09/30 by Syksy Rasanen, Syksy Räsänen, Pyry Wahlman +1 · 141 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #General relativity #Geometry #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitation #Higgs boson #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflaton #Mathematical physics #Observable #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2017/11/047
published in Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2017(11), 047 (Institute of Physics) · 32 pages, 22 figures. v2: added references, clarified text, corrected typos. Published version
openalex publication_date 2017/11/27 · arxiv created 2017/11/28 · arxiv updated 2017/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We compare Higgs inflation in the metric and Palatini formulations of general relativity, with loop corrections treated in a simple approximation. We consider Higgs inflation on the plateau, at a critical point, at a hilltop and in a false vacuum. In the last case there are only minor differences. Otherwise we find that in the Palatini formulation the tensor-to-scalar ratio is consistently suppressed, spanning the range 1 × 10 −13 < r <7 × 10 −5 , compared to the metric case result 2 × 10 −5 < r <0.2. Even when the values of n s and r overlap, the running and running of the running are different in the two formulations. Therefore, if Higgs is the inflaton, inflationary observables can be used to distinguish between different gravitational degrees of freedom, in this case to determine whether the connection is an independent variable. Non-detection of r in foreseeable future observations would not rule out Higgs inflation, only its metric variant. We conclude that in order to fix the theory of Higgs inflation, not only the particle physics UV completion but also the gravitational degrees of freedom have to be explicated.