http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.02497
Our current measurements of the Standard Model parameters imply that the Higgs field resides in a metastable electroweak vacuum, where the vacuum can decay to a lower ground state, with cataclysmic repercussions for our Universe. According to our observations, no such event has happened in the observable universe, in spite of the various energetic processes that could have triggered it. This work serves as an overview of a method that uses the metastability of the false vacuum during cosmological inflation to provide constraints on the Higgs curvature coupling $\xi$. Considering also the effects of the time-dependent Hubble rate on the effective Higgs potential and on our past light-cone space-time geometry, results in state-of-the-art lower $\xi$-bounds from quadratic and quartic chaotic inflation, and Starobinsky-like power-law inflation.
A. Mantziris
Fri, 5 Nov 21
50/72
Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures, based on the poster presentation at the 17th International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2021), 26 August – 3 September 2021, hosted by IFIC Valencia and held online