arXiv:1505.04825hep-ph
The cosmological Higgstory of the vacuum instability
Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.
Abstract
The Standard Model Higgs potential becomes unstable at large field values. After clarifying the issue of gauge dependence of the effective potential, we study the cosmological evolution of the Higgs field in presence of this instability throughout inflation, reheating and the present epoch. We conclude that anti-de Sitter patches in which the Higgs field lies at its true vacuum are lethal for our universe. From this result, we derive upper bounds on the Hubble constant during inflation, which depend on the reheating temperature and on the Higgs coupling to the scalar curvature or to the inflaton. Finally we study how a speculative link between Higgs meta-stability and consistence of quantum gravity leads to a sharp prediction for the Higgs and top masses, which is consistent with measured values.
That's actually a very good question. Moreover, if inflation really happened in the early universe, its almost impossible that the Higgs would have remained in the metastable vacuum during that period. Thus only fine-tuning wouldn't be enough to explain our existence. More on…
pw6hvView on HNParent context