Spacetime Curvature and the Higgs Stability During Inflation

TY - JOUR

T1 - Spacetime Curvature and the Higgs Stability During Inflation

AU - Herranen, Matti Henrikki

AU - Markkanen, Tommi

AU - Nurmi, Sami

AU - Rajantie, Arttu

PY - 2014/11/17

Y1 - 2014/11/17

N2 - It has been claimed that the electroweak vacuum may be unstable during inflation due to large fluctuations of the order H in the case of a high inflationary scale as suggested by BICEP2. We compute the standard model Higgs effective potential including UV-induced curvature corrections at one-loop level. We find that for a high inflationary scale a large curvature mass is generated due to renormalization group running of nonminimal coupling ξ, which either stabilizes the potential against fluctuations for ξEW6×10-2, or destabilizes it for ξEW2×10-2 when the generated curvature mass is negative. Only in the narrow intermediate region may the effect of the curvature mass be significantly smaller.

AB - It has been claimed that the electroweak vacuum may be unstable during inflation due to large fluctuations of the order H in the case of a high inflationary scale as suggested by BICEP2. We compute the standard model Higgs effective potential including UV-induced curvature corrections at one-loop level. We find that for a high inflationary scale a large curvature mass is generated due to renormalization group running of nonminimal coupling ξ, which either stabilizes the potential against fluctuations for ξEW6×10-2, or destabilizes it for ξEW2×10-2 when the generated curvature mass is negative. Only in the narrow intermediate region may the effect of the curvature mass be significantly smaller.

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.211102

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.211102

M3 - Letter

C2 - 25479485

SN - 0031-9007

VL - 113

JO - Physical Review Letters

JF - Physical Review Letters

IS - 21

M1 - 211102

ER -