Observational signatures of Higgs inflation
Abstract
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 mt gtrsim 171.8 GeV the scenario robustly predicts the spectral index ns simeq 0.97 and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r simeq 0.003. The matching is however non-trivial, even the best-fit values mh = 125.09 GeV and mt = 173.21 GeV require a jump δλ ~ 0.01 in the Higgs coupling below the inflationary scale. For mt lesssim 171.8 GeV, the matching may generate a feature in the inflationary potential. In this case the predicted values of ns and r vary but the model is still falsifiable. For example, a detection of negative running of spectral index at level αs lesssim -0.01 would rule out Higgs inflation.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
- Pub Date:
- July 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1088/1475-7516/2016/07/047
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1603.07572
- Bibcode:
- 2016JCAP...07..047E
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 5 figures