The Higgs mechanism from the effective theory of the non-minimal gravity action

TL;DR

This paper proposes a modified Higgs mechanism within an effective gravity-scalar framework that unifies inflation and electroweak phase transition but introduces a large cosmological constant, addressing dark energy issues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to spontaneous symmetry breaking via non-minimal gravity coupling and large vacuum energy, linking inflation and electroweak transition in a unified framework.

Findings

Unified framework for inflation and electroweak phase transition.

Identification of the large cosmological constant as a key issue.

Discussion of potential solutions to the dark energy problem.

Abstract

The spontaneous symmetry breaking for the massless scalar field naturally arises from the framework of the effective theory (the non-minimal coupling of gravity to a scalar field). A magic key ingredient is to add the large vacuum energy density, contributing to the cosmological constant, to the Lagrangian density. By applying this modified spontaneous symmetry breaking with the gauge theory (called modified Higgs mechanism), the inflation physics and the electroweak phase transition can be generated from the same framework. However, this comes with the huge price-the large cosmological constant which is known as the dark energy problem. The possible solution of this issue is also discussed.