Speaker
Andrey Shkerin
(EPFL)
Description
We study Coleman – De Luccia tunneling of the Standard Model Higgs field during
inflation in the case when the electroweak vacuum is metastable. We verify that the
tunneling rate is exponentially suppressed. The main contribution to the suppression
is the same as in flat space-time. We analytically estimate the corrections due to the
expansion of the universe and an effective mass term in the Higgs potential that can
be present at inflation.
Primary author
Andrey Shkerin
(EPFL)
Co-author
Sergey Sibiryakov
(CERN & EPFL & INR RAS)
