Neutrino Mass, Vacuum Stability and Higgs Inflation with Vector-Like Quarks and a Single Right-Handed Neutrino

TL;DR

This paper explores an extension of the Standard Model with vector-like quarks and a right-handed neutrino to address neutrino masses, vacuum stability, and Higgs inflation, providing a comprehensive RG analysis and inflation predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a combined model with VLQs and a RHN, analyzing their roles in stabilizing the Higgs potential and generating neutrino masses with detailed RG and inflation calculations.

Findings

VLQs significantly stabilize the Higgs potential up to the Planck scale.

The model's inflation predictions align with Planck and ACT data.

Neutrino masses are successfully generated via the Type-I seesaw mechanism.

Abstract

We investigate a Standard Model extension containing $n$ degenerate down-type isosinglet vector-like quarks (VLQs) with masses $M_{\mathcal D}$ and Yukawa couplings $y_{\mathcal D}$, supplemented by a single right-handed neutrino (RHN), aiming to simultaneously address neutrino mass generation, electroweak vacuum stability, and Higgs inflation. The VLQs play the dominant role in stabilizing the Higgs potential through their impact on the renormalization-group evolution, while the RHN generates light neutrino masses via a Type-I seesaw mechanism and smooths the high-scale running of the Higgs quartic coupling in the inflationary regime. We perform a two-loop Standard Model renormalization-group equation analysis supplemented by the one-loop contributions of the VLQs and the RHN, with proper matching across their mass thresholds. Using these RG trajectories, we identify the regions in $(n,\, y_{\mathcal D},\, M_{\mathcal D})$ that stabilize the Higgs potential up to the Planck scale while satisfying experimental constraints. Employing the RG-improved Higgs potential in the metric formulation of non-minimal Higgs inflation, we compute the inflationary observables $n_s$ and $r$. The SM+$(n)$VLQ+RHN framework yields predictions consistent with the latest Planck-LB-BK18 and ACT-LB-BK18 data, while simultaneously ensuring electroweak vacuum stability and phenomenologically viable neutrino masses within well-defined regions of parameter space. For comparison, we also investigate the SM+$(n)$VLQ limit and present its vacuum stability and Higgs inflation predictions as a reference to quantify the stabilizing role of the VLQ sector.