Postinflationary vacuum instability and Higgs-inflaton couplings
- University of Helsinki and Helsinki Institute of Physics,P.O. Box 64, Helsinki, FI-00014 (Finland)
- University of Jyväskylä, Department of Physics,P.O. Box 35 (YFL), Jyväskylä, FI-40014 (Finland)
The Higgs-inflaton coupling plays an important role in the Higgs field dynamics in the early Universe. Even a tiny coupling generated at loop level can have a dramatic effect on the fate of the electroweak vacuum. Such Higgs-inflaton interaction is present both at the trilinear and quartic levels in realistic reheating models. In this work, we examine the Higgs dynamics during the preheating epoch, focusing on the effects of the parametric and tachyonic resonances. We use lattice simulations and other numerical tools in our studies. We find that the resonances can induce large fluctuations of the Higgs field which destabilize the electroweak vacuum. Our considerations thus provide an upper bound on quartic and trilinear interactions between the Higgs and the inflaton. We conclude that there exists a favorable range of the couplings within which the Higgs field is stabilized during both inflation and preheating epochs.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- SCOAP3, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
- OSTI ID:
- 22572183
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2016, Issue 11; Other Information: PUBLISHER-ID: JCAP11(2016)025; OAI: oai:repo.scoap3.org:17888; cc-by Article funded by SCOAP3. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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