Abstract
The Higgs potential appears to be fine-tuned, hence very sensitive to values of other scalar fields that couple to the Higgs. We show that this feature can lead to a new epoch in the early Universe featuring violent dynamics coupling the Higgs to a scalar modulus. The oscillating modulus drives tachyonic Higgs particle production. We find a simple parametric understanding of when this process can lead to rapid modulus fragmentation, resulting in gravitational wave production. A nontrivial equation of state arising from the nonlinear dynamics also affects the time elapsed from inflation to the CMB, influencing fits of inflationary models. Supersymmetric theories automatically contain useful ingredients for this picture.
3 More- Received 19 February 2018
- Revised 28 November 2018
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.035008
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.
Published by the American Physical Society