Preheating after Higgs Inflation: Self-Resonance and Gauge boson production

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the preheating process after Higgs inflation, focusing on self-resonance and gauge boson production, revealing how different nonminimal couplings influence energy transfer and particle production efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of linear fluctuations during preheating in Higgs inflation with a nontrivial field-space metric, highlighting the roles of self-resonance and gauge boson production.

Findings

Higgs self-resonance can preheat the universe within 3 e-folds for 0 0

Gauge boson production is dominated by gauge boson mass and field space curvature

Energy transfer to gauge fields can occur within one oscillation for 00 00 00 00

Abstract

We perform an extensive analysis of linear fluctuations during preheating in Higgs inflation in the Einstein frame, where the fields are minimally coupled to gravity, but the field-space metric is nontrivial. The self-resonance of the Higgs and the Higgsed gauge bosons are governed by effective masses that scale differently with the nonminimal couplings and evolve differently in time. Coupled metric perturbations enhance Higgs self-resonance and make it possible for Higgs inflation to preheat solely through this channel. For $\xi\gtrsim 100$ the total energy of the Higgs-inflaton condensate can be transferred to Higgs particles within $3$ $e$-folds after the end of inflation. For smaller values of the nonminimal coupling preheating takes longer, completely shutting off at around $\xi\simeq 30$. The production of gauge bosons is dominated by the gauge boson mass and the field space curvature. For large values of the nonminimal coupling $\xi \gtrsim 1000$, it is possible for the Higgs condensate to transfer the entirety of its energy into gauge fields within one oscillation. For smaller values of the nonminimal coupling gauge bosons decay very quickly into fermions, thereby shutting off Bose enhancement. Estimates of non-Abelian interactions indicate that they will not suppress preheating into gauge bosons for $\xi \gtrsim 1000$.