Observational signatures of Higgs inflation

Journal Article · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/07/047· OSTI ID:22679591

Enckell, Vera-Maria; Enqvist, Kari ^[1]; Nurmi, Sami ^[2]

---

1. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki P.O. Box 64, FI-00014, Helsinki (Finland)
2. Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35 (YFL), FI-40014, Jyväskylä (Finland)

We investigate the dependency of Higgs inflation on the non-renormalisable matching between the low energy Standard Model limit and the inflationary regime at high energies. We show that for the top mass range m {sub t} ∼> 171.8 GeV the scenario robustly predicts the spectral index n {sub s} ≅ 0.97 and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r ≅ 0.003. The matching is however non-trivial, even the best-fit values m {sub h} = 125.09 GeV and m {sub t} = 173.21 GeV require a jump δλ ∼ 0.01 in the Higgs coupling below the inflationary scale. For m {sub t} ∼< 171.8 GeV, the matching may generate a feature in the inflationary potential. In this case the predicted values of n {sub s} and r vary but the model is still falsifiable. For example, a detection of negative running of spectral index at level α {sub s} ∼< −0.01 would rule out Higgs inflation.

• OSTI ID: 22679591
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 07 Vol. 2016; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COUPLING
DETECTION
GEV RANGE
HIGGS BOSONS
HIGGS MODEL
INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE
MASS
STANDARD MODEL