Higgs chameleon

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel approach to stabilize the Higgs potential in the early Universe by treating the Higgs as a chameleon field coupled solely to the inflaton, avoiding conflicts with current constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a new mechanism where the Higgs acts as a chameleon field coupled only to the inflaton, providing an alternative to previous stabilization methods.

Findings

Higgs as chameleon can stabilize the potential during inflation

The model avoids conflicts with existing Higgs and chameleon constraints

Offers a new perspective on early Universe Higgs stabilization

Abstract

The existing constraints from particle colliders reveal a suspicious but nonlethal metastability for our current electroweak vacuum of Higgs potential in the standard model of particle physics, which is, however, disfavored in the early Universe if the inflationary Hubble scale is larger than the instability scale when Higgs quartic self-coupling runs into negative value. Alternative to previous trials of acquiring a positive effective mass-squared from Higgs quadratic couplings to Ricci scalar or inflaton field, we propose a third approach to stabilize the Higgs potential in the early Universe by regarding Higgs as chameleon coupled to inflaton alone without conflicting to the present constraints on either Higgs or chameleon.