Theory Colloquia

Higgs Inflation as a Mirage

by Jose Ramon Espinosa (ICREA / IFAE Barcelona (ES))

Europe/Zurich
4/3-006 - TH Conference Room (CERN)

4/3-006 - TH Conference Room

CERN

110
Show room on map
Description
After reviewing the nice properties of Higgs inflation and some of its problems, I will discuss a simple unitarization of the scenario that is genuinely weakly coupled up to Planckian energies. A large non-minimal coupling between the Higgs and the Ricci curvature is induced dynamically at intermediate energies, as a simple ratio of mass scales. Inflationary dynamics is not dominated by the Higgs field, but 'Higgs inflation' arises as an approximate 'mirage' picture of the true dynamics. I will speculate on the generality of this phenomenon and show that, if Higgs-inflation arises as an effective description, the details of the UV completion are necessary to extract robust quantitative predictions.
Slides
Video in CDS