4–6 May 2015
University of Pittsburgh
US/Eastern timezone

Higgs Inflation, Seesaw Physics and Fermion Dark Matter

4 May 2015, 17:00
15m
G26 (University of Pittsburgh)

G26

University of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, PA 15260
parallel talk Cosmology II

Speaker

Prof. Nobuchika Okada (University of Alabama)

Description

We present an inflationary model in which the Standard Model Higgs doublet field with non-minimal coupling to gravity drives inflation, and the effective Higgs potential is stabilized by new physics which includes a dark matter particle and right-handed neutrinos for the seesaw mechanism. All of the new particles are fermions, so that the Higgs doublet is the unique inflaton candidate. With central values for the masses of the top quark and the Higgs boson, the renormalization group improved Higgs potential is employed to yield the scalar spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.968$, the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r \simeq 0.003$, and the running of the spectral index $\alpha=dn_s/d \ln k \simeq -5.2 \times 10^{-4}$ for the number of e-folds $N_0=60$ ($n_s \simeq 0.962$, $r \simeq 0.004$, and $\alpha \simeq -7.5 \times 10^{-4}$ for $N_0=50$). The fairly low value of $r \simeq 0.003$ predicted in this class of models means that the ongoing space and land based experiments are not expected to observe gravity waves generated during inflation.

Author

Prof. Nobuchika Okada (University of Alabama)

Co-author

Prof. qaisar shafi (university of delaware)

Presentation materials