Inflation and pseudo-Goldstone Higgs boson

TL;DR

This paper explores a model where the Higgs boson is a pseudo-Goldstone boson, linking inflationary cosmology with low-energy particle physics, and showing that inflation predictions align with observations.

Contribution

It introduces a framework where the Higgs as a pseudo-Goldstone boson enables inflation consistent with cosmological data, connecting inflation with electroweak scale physics.

Findings

Scalar self-couplings can be parametrically suppressed.

Non-minimal couplings to gravity can be of order one or less.

Electroweak scale arises entirely from the inflaton field.

Abstract

We consider inflation within a model framework where the Higgs boson arises as a pseudo-Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of a global symmetry at a scale significantly larger than the electroweak one. We show that in such a model the scalar self-couplings can be parametrically suppressed and, consequently, the non-minimal couplings to gravity can be of order one or less, while the inflationary predictions of the model remain compatible with the precision cosmological observations. Furthermore, in the model we study, the existence of the electroweak scale is entirely due to the inflaton field. Our model therefore suggests that inflation and low energy particle phenomenology may be more entwined than assumed so far.