Higgs inflation

Higgs-based inflationary models are extremely appealing since they do not introduce any extra degrees of freedom beyond those already present in the Standard Model.  Although the Higgs field alone is not able to produce an early exponential expansion of the Universe, it can do it in the presence of non-minimal couplings to gravity. The relation between the inflationary masses and the low-energy masses of the Higgs and the top quark is, however, subject to ambiguities associated to the non-renormalizability of the Standard Model non-minimally coupled to gravity. The remnants of the different ultraviolet completions modify the running of the Higgs self-coupling and can give rise to an effective potential containing one extra minimum at energies between the electroweak and the Planck scale. The fate of the Universe after inflation (i.e. whether the Universe ends in the true or the false vacuum) depends on the maximal temperature of the Standard Model plasma produced during (p)reheating.

Selected paper(s) on this topic:

Critical Higgs inflation
Vacuum instability

Selected talks(s) on this topic:

Critical Higgs inflation
Vacuum instability

Have a look also to my recent lawphysics webinar in youtube !