On stability of electroweak vacuum during inflation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of the electroweak vacuum during cosmic inflation, showing that tunneling to a lower energy state is highly suppressed, with analytical estimates of universe expansion effects on this process.

Contribution

It provides an analytical study of Higgs vacuum tunneling during inflation, including corrections from universe expansion and effective mass effects.

Findings

Tunneling rate is exponentially suppressed during inflation.

Main suppression mechanism is similar to flat space-time.

Corrections due to universe expansion are analytically estimated.

Abstract

We study Coleman-De Luccia tunneling of the Standard Model Higgs field during inflation in the case when the electroweak vacuum is metastable. We verify that the tunneling rate is exponentially suppressed. The main contribution to the suppression is the same as in flat space-time. We analytically estimate the corrections due to the expansion of the universe and an effective mass term in the Higgs potential that can be present at inflation.