Higgs boson, renormalization group, and naturalness in cosmology

TL;DR

This paper explores how the Standard Model Higgs boson, when acting as an inflaton with non-minimal gravity coupling, can be constrained by cosmological data, linking particle physics and cosmology through renormalization group analysis.

Contribution

It demonstrates the sensitivity of Higgs inflation predictions to cosmological measurements and discusses the naturalness of the model within perturbation theory, including two-loop considerations.

Findings

Higgs mass range is determined by CMB spectral index bounds.

SM phenomenology can be tested with current and future cosmological data.

Naturalness of the model is supported within the perturbative regime.

Abstract

We consider the renormalization group improvement in the theory of the Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson playing the role of an inflaton with a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. At the one-loop level with the running of constants taken into account, it leads to a range of the Higgs mass that is entirely determined by the lower WMAP bound on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectral index. We find that the SM phenomenology is sensitive to current cosmological data, which suggests to perform more precise CMB measurements as a SM test complementary to the LHC program. By using the concept of a field-dependent cutoff, we show the naturalness of the gradient and curvature expansion in this model within the conventional perturbation theory range of the SM. We also discuss the relation of these results to two-loop calculations and the limitations of the latter caused by parametrization and gauge dependence problems.