Eternal Higgs inflation and cosmological constant problem

TL;DR

This paper explores how the Higgs potential in superstring theory relates to eternal inflation and the cosmological constant problem, proposing that the Higgs field's behavior at high energies connects to a runaway vacuum with zero energy.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the Higgs potential beyond the Planck scale naturally leads to a runaway vacuum, supporting the idea that the Higgs field drives eternal inflation and offers insights into the small cosmological constant.

Findings

Higgs potential connects to a runaway vacuum with zero energy.

The behavior is consistent with toroidal compactification of non-supersymmetric heterotic string theory.

Supports the idea that the Higgs field causes eternal inflation and explains the cosmological constant.

Abstract

We investigate the Higgs potential beyond the Planck scale in the superstring theory, under the assumption that the supersymmetry is broken at the string scale. We identify the Higgs field as a massless state of the string, which is indicated by the fact that the bare Higgs mass can be zero around the string scale. We find that, in the large field region, the Higgs potential is connected to a runaway vacuum with vanishing energy, which corresponds to opening up an extra dimension. We verify that such universal behavior indeed follows from the toroidal compactification of the non-supersymmetric $SO(16)\times SO(16)$ heterotic string theory. We show that this behavior fits in the picture that the Higgs field is the source of the eternal inflation. The observed small value of the cosmological constant of our universe may be understood as the degeneracy with this runaway vacuum, which has vanishing energy, as is suggested by the multiple point criticality principle.