Higgsed Gauge-flation
We study a variant of Gauge-flation where the gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken by a Higgs sector. Here, we work in the Stueckelberg limit and demonstrate that the dynamics remain (catastrophically) unstable for cases where the gauge field masses satisfy γ< 2, where γ= g 2 2=ψH 2, g is the gauge coupling, ψ is the gauge field vacuum expectation value, and H is the Hubble rate. We compute the spectrum of density uctuations and gravitational waves, and show that the model can produce observationally viable spectra. The background gauge field texture violates parity, resulting in a chiral gravitational wave spectrum. This arises due to an exponential enhancement of one polarization of the spin-2 fluctuation of the gauge field. Higgsed Gauge-flation can produce observable gravitational waves at in inflationary energy scales well below the GUT scale.
- Publication Date:
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0015655
- Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of High Energy Physics (Online)
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Journal of High Energy Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 2017; Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 1029-8479
- Publisher:
- Springer Berlin
- Research Org:
- Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Org:
- USDOE; University of Illinois
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM; Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1425950
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript (DOE)
- Publisher's Version of Record
- https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP08(2017)130