2017/08/22 by Edward Hardy
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Higgs boson #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflaton #Mathematics #Particle physics #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Scalar (mathematics) #Theoretical physics #Vacuum expectation value #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep11(2017)125
22 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2017/08/22 · openalex publication_date 2017/11/01 · arxiv updated 2017/12/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A bstract We study models in which reheating happens only through non-perturbative processes. The energy transferred can be exponentially suppressed unless the inflaton is coupled to a particle with a parametrically small mass. Additionally, in some models a light scalar with a negative mass squared parameter leads to much more efficient reheating than one with a positive mass squared of the same magnitude. If a theory contains many sectors similar to the Standard Model coupled to the inflaton via their Higgses, such dynamics can realise the Nnaturalness solution to the hierarchy problem. A sector containing a light Higgs with a non-zero vacuum expectation value is dominantly reheated and there is little energy transferred to the other sectors, consistent with cosmological constraints. The inflaton must decouple from other particles and have a flat potential at large field values, in which case the visible sector UV cutoff can be raised to 10 TeV in a simple model.