Modified Gravity and Inflaton Assisted Dynamical Generation of Charge Confinement and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking in Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel gravity-matter model coupling modified f(R) gravity with an inflaton, a nonlinear gauge field, and the electroweak sector, explaining universe evolution, electroweak symmetry breaking, and confinement dynamically.

Contribution

It presents a unified Lagrangian framework using non-Riemannian volume-forms to dynamically generate electroweak symmetry breaking and confinement in cosmology.

Findings

Dynamical generation of Higgs symmetry breaking in the late universe

Suppression of electroweak breaking in the early universe

Dynamical QCD-like confinement in the late universe

Abstract

We describe a new type of gravity-matter models where modified f(R)=R+R^2 gravity couples non-canonically to a scalar "inflaton", to the bosonic sector of the electroweak particle model and to a special nonlinear gauge field with a square-root of the standard Maxwell/Yang-Mills kinetic term simulating QCD confining dynamics. Our construction is based on the powerful formalism of non-Riemannian space-time volume-forms - alternative metric-independent volume elements defined in terms of auxiliary antisymmetric tensor gauge fields. Our model provides a unified Lagrangian action principle description of: (i) the evolution of both "early" and "late" universe by the "inflaton" scalar field; (ii) gravity-inflaton-assisted dynamical generation of Higgs spontaneous breakdown of electroweak gauge symmetry in the "late" universe, as well as dynamical suppression of electroweak breakdown in the "early" universe; (iii) gravity-inflaton-assisted dynamical generation of QCD-like confinement in the "late" universe and suppression of confinement in the "early" universe due to the special interplay with the dynamics of the QCD-simulating nonlinear gauge field.