Higgs portal valleys, stability and inflation

Spacetime Curvature and Higgs Stability after Inflation.

We investigate the dynamics of the Higgs field at the end of inflation in the minimal scenario consisting of an inflaton field coupled to the standard model only through the nonminimal gravitational coupling ξ of the Higgs field. Such a coupling is required by renormalization of the standard model in curved space, and in the current scenario also by vacuum stability during high-scale inflation....

Inflection-point Higgs Inflation

Inflection-point inflation is an interesting possibility to realize a successful slow-roll inflation when inflation is driven by a single scalar field with its initial value below the Planck mass (φI . MP l). In order for a renormalization group (RG) improved effective λφ4 potential to develop an inflection-point, the quartic coupling λ(φ) must exhibit a minimum with an almost vanishing value i...

Higgs Dynamics during Inflation

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, and recent measurements from the BICEP2 collaboration indicating a tensor-to-scalar ratio of r = 0.20 −0.05[1], particle physics is now in an interesting position. The most precise measurements of the Higgs boson and top quark masses appear to show that the Electroweak vacuum is unstable under the fluctuations produced by inflation at the energy scale the ...

Exploring the Higgs portal

Influenza evolution navigates stability valleys

By reconstructing how an influenza protein collected in 1968 might have evolved into one collected in 2007, researchers have obtained new insights into the interactions between genetic mutations.