Implications of the Higgs discovery for gravity and cosmology

TL;DR

The discovery of the Higgs boson has significant implications for gravity and cosmology, especially affecting models involving light scalars like dark matter and quintessence, due to its strong coupling with other scalars.

Contribution

This paper analyzes how the Higgs discovery constrains models of gravity and cosmology involving light scalars, highlighting the impact on dark matter and quintessence theories.

Findings

Higgs couples strongly to other scalars, affecting their behavior.

Standard model-like Higgs limits non-standard decay processes.

Constraints challenge models with light scalars such as axions and dark matter.

Abstract

The discovery of the Higgs boson is one of the greatest discoveries in this century. The standard model is finally complete. Apart from its significance in particle physics, this discovery has profound implications for gravity and cosmology in particular. Many perturbative quantum gravity interactions involving scalars are not suppressed by powers of Planck mass. Since gravity couples anything with mass to anything with mass, then Higgs must be strongly coupled to any other fundamental scalar in nature, even if the gauge couplings are absent in the original Lagrangian. Since the LHC data indicate that the Higgs is very much standard model-like, there is very little room for non-standard model processes, e.g. invisible decays. This severely complicates any model that involves light enough scalar that the Higgs can kinematically decay to. Most notably, these are the quintessence models, models including light axions, and light scalar dark matter models.