About the role of the Higgs boson in the evolution of the early universe

TL;DR

This paper explores how the Higgs boson influenced the early universe's evolution, proposing it as the inflaton and linking SM parameters to cosmic inflation and baryon asymmetry.

Contribution

It presents a novel scenario where the Higgs field drives inflation and explains baryon asymmetry using Standard Model physics without new particles.

Findings

The Higgs mass term changes sign near the Planck scale.

The Higgs field acts as the inflaton during the early universe.

SM parameters can account for dark energy and baryon asymmetry.

Abstract

After the discovery of the Higgs particle the most relevant structures of the SM have been verified and for the first time we know all parameters of the SM within remarkable accuracy. Together with recent calculations of the SM renormalization group coefficients up to three loops we can safely extrapolate running couplings high up in energy. Assuming that the SM is a low energy effective theory of a cutoff theory residing at the Planck scale, we are able to calculate the effective bare parameters of the underlying cutoff system. It turns out that the effective bare mass term changes sign not far below the Planck scale, which means that in the early universe the SM was in the symmetric phase. The sign-flip, which is a result of a conspiracy between the SM couplings and their screening/antiscreening behavior, triggers the Higgs mechanism. Above the Higgs phase transition the bare mass term in the Higgs potential must have had a large positive value, enhanced by the quadratic divergence of the bare Higgs mass. Likewise the quartically enhanced positive vacuum energy density is present in the symmetric phase. The Higgs system thus provides the large dark energy density in the early universe, which triggers slow-roll inflation, i.e. the SM Higgs is the inflaton scalar field. Reheating is dominated by the decay of the heavy Higgses into (in the symmetric phase) massless top/anti-top quark pairs. The new scenario possibly could explain the baryon-asymmetry essentially in terms of SM physics