Late and early time phenomenology of Higgs-dependent cutoff

TL;DR

This paper investigates the implications of a Higgs-dependent cutoff scale in theories with non-minimal Higgs-gravity coupling, exploring its effects on reheating, baryogenesis, dark matter, neutrino masses, and proton decay.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of higher dimensional operators suppressed by the Higgs-dependent cutoff and their impact on post-inflationary cosmology within the Standard Model or nuMSM.

Findings

Higgs-dependent cutoff does not hinder Higgs inflation.

Extra operators can facilitate baryogenesis and sterile neutrino dark matter production.

Potential for neutrino mass generation and proton decay due to these operators.

Abstract

The analysis of theories with non-minimal coupling of Higgs field to gravity revealed that they enter into strong coupling regime above certain Higgs-dependent cutoff, which may be considerably below the Planck scale. Assuming that the effective theory, complementing the Standard Model or its minimal extension--the nuMSM--contains a set of higher dimensional operators suppressed by the Higgs-dependent cutoff, we analyse the reheating of the Universe after the Higgs inflation. We show that extra terms do not spoil the Higgs inflation, but can lead to baryogenesis and to warm sterile neutrino dark matter production at the reheating stage of the Universe expansion. They can also result in neutrino mass generation and proton decay.